Rapture: House of Broken Mirrors

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Chapter XXI: Robbing the monster

"Attaaaaaaaack!" Heavy roared.

The machine gun rounds ate away the wooden post Charlie was hiding behind.

Charlie sweared together all the nasty curses he could think of before he flinged around the corner and shot at random with the revolver Heavy had thrown into his hands. With all the mayhem that was ensuing from the ambush they had walked into, he was bound to hit something. Heavy had been yelling commands but most of his fellow splicers were pinned down and couldn't see a thing.

A deafening sound buzzed through the air as a shockwave rippled and struck the barricades the Ryanists had set up.

"Ernie?" Charlie said flabbergasted.

"Raaaaaaah! Crush kill... Sorry, I'm going to talk normal now," Ernie said as he loaded his shotgun and subsequently unloaded it into the face of the only Ryanist that was still standing after his Sonic Boom.

"Keep it up Ernie," Buck said as he held his arm in front of his eyes and saw it bulging like yellow stains ever growing bigger.

Then they bursted, releasing ghastly insectoid creatures that proceeded to gather in a cloud the size of his head and fly at any enemy that came within sight. buck had to be careful not to hit any of his fellow freedom fighters, as a red-headed woman glared at him for a moment before striking an enemy splicer with a wicked fist of lightning.

Buck shook his head as he held up the research camera and kept it fixed on Buck's targets. It printed out some data for converting the ADAM within him into gene tonics, at least that's what he theorized it did. It could produce small amounts of bonus damage ampules that they'd inject to improve their vision and reflexes to shoot people with certain varieties of common splicer cocktails more efficiently, but it couldn't produce vials of gene tonics rewards as Ernie had told him about. He needed another Brain Boost to figure it out.

"I need another guy over here," Heavy said as he braced himself to shoot another payload out of his grenade launcher.

A fiery stream of hot air passed over him as it consumed everything in its path.

"Alright Eddie, finish 'em!" Heavy said as he readied to fire.

"I'm not Eddie," Sandy said as she rubbed her bone-dry skin. Soon the black soot and white ice crystals would mix and pervert her arm and the rest of her body. She couldn't get used to the occasional shocks that sprung from her head to her goose bumps. "And maybe you should think more about ending this war than scoring kills."

"The truce meetings will begin in a few days, missy," Heavy said. "Untill then, I ain't taking any chances. They do much the same."

"Errrrrhuaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

"What was that?" Sally asked. "They're running."

"Change operations, they're not running, they have the ultimate asset and weapon," Heavy said. "Any cowards come now or get shot if they run when I have to save their sorry a**es."

"Ay ay, H," Charlie said.

"Get ready," Heavy said as a yellow light shone from behind a holed house. The rusted armor of the Bouncer blended in with the rest of the crooked housing. The spherical shape that contained his head shone with its lights on its surroundings as it grunted at the debris that impeded its progress. He revved up his drill and barged on through, before stepping aside. A young girl came from behind him and hummed as she skipped along the corpses of the fallen Ryanists. It had to be a Little Sister, hardly a little girl at all, but Charlie couldn't judge as much from the distance he was at.

"Bring it down and maybe you'll get a piece of the pie," Heavy said. "If you get too higher ground, we can easily take it down. Get on the most stable buildings and pump it full of lead. That drill ain't gonna fly upwards, but it will to anyone on ground level."

The group did as they were told and climbed up as Heavy fired up his last grenade. It would sound off like the Fourth of July, but it wouldn't bring down the big guy on its own. That's where Sandy and the others came in.

"Fire!" Heavy yelled as he shot his payload with an astounding accuracy right in the big brute's head.

It moaned, then roared as the bioluminescent liquid in its helmet stated he was steaming hot mad. If that wouldn't become apparent precisely one second and a quarter later.

"Bruuuuuuuuuuuuaaaaaah!" the Bouncer responded to its head being punctured with all kinds of shrapnel and in its blind rage tried to find a way up to mix Heavy into a bloody pulp. And any splicer that stood in its way.

"Keep hitting it, fire away," Heavy said as he looked at his arm for a moment, then concentrated and fired a lightning bolt at the bronze Ryanist knight which confused it even more. And angered it to the truly dangerous level.

An unexpected blood splatter made Buck turn around and catch the red-headed woman, who stuttered before her gaping head wound proved to take the life out of her body.

Snipers, those Ryanists had returned to protect their gruesome little harvester. Buck looked over the roofs and saw them approaching. They had to get to cover. And weaken the Big Daddy at the same time. Charlie determinedly kept shooting it as the others around him ran for their lives.

Darren and Sandy stood side by side and unleashed an Electro Bolt each before Sally finished them off with two rapid incendiary bolts. As the two turned to a crisp and others came to take their place, Sally changed her ammo for regular, piercing bolts and shot it at an enemy, telekinetically pulling it out than throwing it through another woman's eye. Eddie lit the Bouncer on fire as Buck followed his lead and unleashed another swarm of his creatures to further blind the Bouncer. Ernie had no way of hitting it, except...

Again, a shockwave blasted through to the air and hit the Big Daddy it was still as mad as ever, but the only thing that been killed seemingly was Buck's creatures.

"Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaooooooooough!" the Bouncer roared as it rammed into the building, repeatedly, untill it started to weaken.

The Atlas freedom fighters had to run for their lives as the building collapsed underneath them. Charlie only narrowly hung on as Sally pulled him up, semi-telekinetically. She plunged one of her last EVE hypos in her arm as she sat down. That was a close one. Determined to fix his mistake right away, Ernie dropped down before anyone could say anything and trashed the Bouncer's head before he shotgunned every single red light in its helmet untill the arm that had grabbed him lessened its grip and its drill stopped spinning.

The group had come down to rescue Ernie from what should've been a suicide mission. As the others descended, Heavy commanded: "Harvest her, before the Ryanists return. That's an order."

[Scriptor Scorpio]

A turn for the worse? I'd better say, I'm going on a lengthy vacation so I won't be back for posting untill September. Hope you enjoy the rest of the Summer!


Chapter XXII: Black and white, part 1

Adelaide felt her muscles tense as she slowly slid off the bed and unto the wooden floor. Her left elbow stuck out so she could see it as she noted how it felt to have such power. As a stream of water twirled around her finger, she stood up and turned to the wooden cabinet on the side. Her brown hair curled over her forehead, so she saw I the mirror that hung on the wall. As she stroke the stray hairs back, she picked up her revolver. Today, she would feel worthy.

“Somebody bloody shoot ‘em, those bast*** are freakin’ everywhere!” the man leading the charge said.

They had run into unexpected difficulties. As blasts of cold air and blinding lightning flew past them, the rebels tried to hold their ground. A small, but agile youngster, not older than 16 dived head-first next to the barricade on the side of the rebels and shouted:

“They’re pelting us with hells of gunfires, Sir! They made the old McClendon’s storage facility into a genuine fortress. No caliber or bloke has been able to push through those brick walls!”

“Hell, so that Dagson wasn’t telling a load of cr**. They’re gonna overrun us. Unless…” the mustached leader of the charge said as he tossed around before he faced the one he desired to speak to.

“Finn, time to prove your worth. If you can pickpocket my watch without me noticing, well, you can sure as hell try pi**ing those snobs of b**ches!” he said.

It had been quite clear to Adelaide from the very first day that this man liked to swear to his heart’s content. And send others on frequent suicide missions. Addie wasn’t afraid, she knew she was ready.

“Send me in,” she said.

The man’s mustache turned like whiskers as he narrowed his cold, blue eyes.

“Send me in, Sir,” Addie added.

“Very well, go now!” the man said as he directed others to provide fire support with their plasmids. Experimental hooch, the leader thought. No way they’re getting me into that insane Sinclair’s test batch.

Adelaide readied her gun as she held it against her waist and her legs felt like they could move mountains, or jump one. As she leaped into the air, the Ryanists shouted: “Kill her, kill the witch!”

When she suddenly disappeared. Some not too bright youngsters were still aiming their broken bottles up in the air, curious as to where she went.

“Another one of those dirty tricks, McKinley!” the Ryanist leader spat at the mustached coward on the other side. “Fire some plasmids all over this sh**house of a dump. She’ll be dead soon enough,” he said while he was backing away to take refuge in the metal casing inside the storage facility.

She’d made it, she slowly rounded the corner as she immediately backed away again as two gunmen seemed to look over to the corner she covered behind. Seems they didn’t see her, now how could that be, she thought with a grin. She forced herself not to roll the cylinder of her gun as she moved in closer for the kill.

The Ryanist leader turned to see as a curious, long brown-haired woman rounded the corner, preparing to strike his men from behind.

“Look out, behind you!” he shouted as he felt the pain surging through him as if it was his own body that got shattered and bludgeoned. But the gunman seemed alive and well and turned around to shoot the woman, but she didn’t feel a thing either. It was the leader himself that felt his intestines turn cold and his heart seized to beat as all the blood it had moving around was rapidly leaching from both the front and the back of his lower body. With a jam of the sharp blade in his spine, he dropped to the floor, the lights leaving his eyes.

Before the two gunmen could fathom what had transpired and why one woman was immortal and her duplicate just appeared out of thin air to assassinate their leader, the same was dealt to them with three shots in the head, each.

“We’ve been breached, breached!” a man shouted before she saw a woman in a black and green dress fly past him out of a window.

He aimed to nail her to the floor, but before he could, a few drops of water fell of her hand and unto the pavement, blasting away a geyser from underneath the Ryanists’ feat and catching the wicked with in its powerful watery grasp before putting her down and a red flash of smoke made her disappear. Who the hell was she? And why were any of them still alive?

“We got some food,” Sally said as she came walking down the stairs into the basement where the rest was gathered.

Wyatt took one glance at the few ounces they’d received and he said: “That’s not enough, that’s not nearly enough.”

Sandy followed after Sally with some more scraps of food and Wyatt had instantly noticed.

“I.. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have yelled at you, it’s just… Just look at it,” Wyatt said as it coincidentally just spoke.

“Daddy, where are you Daaaddy, give me hugs and kisses, make it all right,” the thing said.

If it were human, you could have said it had the twinkling big eyes of angels, with a shine of mirrors of brandished gold, the spotless skin of a baby seal and long, wavy hair in a ponytail as midnight black as Sandy’s. She wore her navy blue dress full cuts and holes with pride, as she mused where the angels went and if Daddy would come home soon. But she wasn’t a human. Not anymore. She was a Little Sister, the twisted harvester of corpses and drinker of human blood polluted with ADAM, drugs and alcohol. She wielded her long, rusted needle with the remodeled baby bottle container with as much delight as she sung eerie nursery rhymes, twisted into a mantra of subservience. They should have harvested her, Claire had said. She’d ordered Eddie to do it so they could grow strong enough to escape to the mainland, lest she had to have her hands get dirty. He’d refused and she had pushed him away, leading him to help find a place to hide the thing they had ‘saved’ from Ryan and Atlas alike. They had masked the loss of ADAM caused by not harvesting the little girl monster by handing over all the stabilizing supply they had saved up to keep from losing their sanity. The nuts and the crazies were banging on the doors of Talos Trappings every day now and it wouldn’t be for that long before they would join them.

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Today is the first of October. Due to exams, vacation and now school having started a while ago, I find myself struggling to write chapters in a quick enough pace.

Nevertheless, I feel after 500 views having been added after the posting of the last chapter, I should post my next chapter. I only got two in spare and I should be careful posting the subsequent chapters as the plot twists need to be played well-dosed and timed. I'm thus also overthinking slowing down the posting rate. Don't know how you guys feel about it though. I'll see what I can do, but I can't promise subsequent chapters that don't exist yet. Anyway, hope you like the 23rd chapter And see you someday.


Chapter XXIII: Black and white, part 2

“Listen to me carefully, in a few days, the truce meetings will commence,” Adelaide’s boss said. McKinley, the one with the mustache. “You and I and everybody else here knows those Ryanists are playing an angle. Nonetheless, we have to play along their game so our more naïve supporters still believe we can live free without being soaked in blood and all that. But what those snobs on the other side don’t realize is that this is a perfect opportunity to decapitate the Talos Trappings lieutenants, after you killed my brother. That is if they try something first, wich they will. You will be that assassin. They will be keeping a close eye on you, but we are confident you will succeed.”

“Yes, sir,” Adelaide said.


Wyatt had returned to the basement. Only Sandy was there to keep watch over the ‘girl’ thing, as to not attract attention to the food they’d been smuggling over to her. ‘An extra mouth to feed, you idiots’ Claire had yelled at them before Eddie took her along and had proceeded to stay by her side. Now not just to protect her, but to keep her from revealing the group’s secret to Heavy and the others. Or doing something stupid.

“Wyatt, how are those bots coming along?” Sandy asked as she noticed Darren was following behind Wyatt a few steps above him.

“They’re almost ready, just a little tweak here and there,” Wyatt said as he descended.

He eyed the monster as he turned to Darren. His look seemed to mean to say if Darren was sure of this. Darren nodded and then they both turned to Sandy.

“Something amiss…” Sandy said as she saw the thing in Darren’s hand shining as the light of their lantern bounced off of it and into her eyes.

Darren walked right past her as he went to sit down next to the Little Sister.

Though he still retained his brute appearance, Buck Manning had managed to drag the corps of a Ryanist into the basement without anyone seemingly noticing. Maybe his Brain Boost had really started to kick in, or perhaps people didn’t really care what you did with a Ryanist, dead or alive. As long as you didn’t start a cult or start spreading Ryanist propaganda amongst the ranks, you could do as you pleased. But this was something… strange…

“Whose idea was this?” Sandy asked.

She watched as Darren struck without hesitation into the stomach of the heavily mutilated corpse with a strange contraption. It had a yellow handle, a large bottle she remembered handing to Wyatt after she was done with it and a very long, rusted needle at the end of it. A small pneumatic system on the side helped Darren extract a sickening red paste from the body. But it weren’t the splicer’s intestines. Not completely at least.

“This isn’t a good fill,” Darren said.

“No keep going, recycle it with the switch,” Wyatt said as he had seemingly instructed before.

Darren did as he said. Sandy couldn’t decide what she was looking at. Before she could say something, the girl crept closer to Darren. She hadn’t allowed anyone to come closer, lest she let out a hellish scream and call in the others, very eager to harvest her dry. But now, she took her smaller tool, her syringe with a baby bottle for a container and stuck it in the splicer’s stomach as well, as she clenched the handle, causing the internal pneumatics to create the necessary underpressure needed to start sucking up the rest of the fluid. Such a small creature acting with such precision. Darren observed the gestures and tried to best the Little Sister in getting enough of the red stuff as if they were playing a game. These creatures had a very different look on the world. Like with the Big Daddies, you could thank Dr. Suchong for taking away these ‘girls’ their humanity. At the Little Sisters Orphanage… though some say they’re now taking them off the streets.

“You’re funny big brother,” the girl said.

Darren looked at Sandy and seemed nervous.

“Well done, little brother,” Sandy said.

She looked very surprised, but in a good way. They’d just managed to find a way to procure raw ADAM.

At night, or morning, it was hard to tell in a basement that was also perpetually deep, deep underwater, everyone in the group gathered around Darren and Wyatt and their wonder. It had been long and strenuous hours, as they’d relentlessly fought against the Ryanists, still winding up with a net loss of territory. Heavy wasn’t too happy. Their enemies would surely think twice about the meetings in a few days if they kept winning like they did today. Even the Wicked Witch, part of another squad on their own side, didn’t scare off all those snobs enough to stay on their own turf.

But the group had other things to worry about. This discovery, or should it be called invention, of Wyatt, Darren, Ernie and Buck seemed too good to be true. Darren’s Fountain of Youth, Metabolic EVE, Medical Expert, EVE Expert… He’d gathered most of these ridiculously passive tonics when nobody wanted them. They made him hard to kill or hard to drain of EVE because he could metabolise the stuff and carry more supplies for health and EVE. The fountain tonic helped him heal when in running water and seeing as this whole place was leaking as much as it was corrupted, he’d put up an impressive defense as he shielded others. Mostly Sandy, who could overwhelm almost any opponent one on one. With some experimental defensive tonics made through Ernie’s experience and Buck’s ever growing intuitive mind, they had provided Darren with the means to heal his friends and himself with a simple injection of ADAM, or provide them with EVE. But First Aid Kits weren’t that up for grabs to provide that healing and usually also stabilizing dose of ADAM.

Sally had talked to a woman about her age who had seen a Little Sister healing her Big Daddy after suffering near lethal injuries. All her fellow ADAM hunters had been killed before the Big Daddy had suffered the same fate and she couldn’t do anything but watch as all their efforts waned away with the ADAM tide. The Little Sister only did this to her ‘Mr. Bubbles’, though. They needed a way for her ADAM to become their ADAM without harvesting her for it. And so, Wyatt explained the plan to the others.

They‘d convinced Heavy they had picked up a trail from a Big Daddy. It wouldn’t pick up a Little Sister from her vent if he noticed a large squad tracking him. They were smarter than people gave them credit for. A bit smarter at least. So the group managed to get permission to go at the supposed target with their small group, promising they would return any ADAM they’d get or be shot on sight if they didn’t return before midnight. The adolescents all agreed naturally.

Eddie had to keep Claire’s mouth shut rude and manually until they were far enough so any splicers wouldn’t hear them: they were going to find corpses. This plan better work, Sandy thought to herself. How much would her stepbrother do for her to live? Probably… Anything. His large pumping ADAM syringe only seemed like the beginning.

[Scriptor Scorpio]

I got a ridiculous amount of things planned, actually.


Chapter XXIV: Healing and growth, part 1

“I found a body!” Ernie yelled as Buck prepared his Research camera.

“Okay, let me set up a perimeter,” Wyatt said.

Darren and Sandy meanwhile opened the bag the former had been carrying on his back.

“Air is fun,” the Little Sister said as she peeked out with her yellow glowing eyes. Sandy tried to reach in, but the girl pulled back and looked like she’d let out a scream if Sandy didn’t back away right that instant.

Sandy pulled back and let Darren handle ‘it’. She was sure there were plenty of Big Daddies around to hear the thing if it made as much as a squeak. Where did those things keep coming from anyway? Maybe if they killed enough of those bronze monsters, they could try to break through… which reminded her of why they’d been doing this all these weeks, becoming stronger and injecting more ADAM every day. Dad… and Darren’s mom, who Sandy almost considered to be her own. But getting to them wouldn’t be easy. They needed a bit… more. And this girl would give it to them through Darren.

“Hand me my… angel tool, if you will?” Darren said as he Little Sister picked up his bigger syringe before he picked her up out of the bag and onto the dirty floor. She’d only worn one shoe when they’d found her and it was a bit worse for wear. She didn’t seemed to be bothered at all.

“Angels are dancing, come on big brother,” the girl said as she skipped along to the corpse Ernie had found and immediately stuck her needle in it.

“Wait! I’m not, not ready, G*d d*mmit!” Wyatt said as he went into overdrive to hasten his preparations. It was completely quiet here… Even this remote space had some kind of crawling echo through walls and windows. Now… nothing.

“Everyone, get into your positions!” Sandy yelled as the others did as she asked almost immediately. “Ernie, Buck, Eddie, you ready?”

“Ready,” they said.

“Sally, Wyatt, Charlie… Darren?”

“We’re all ready. Let’s do this,” Sally said.

Just as she’d readied her crossbow, the first inhuman cry could be heard from just a few meters away.

“Son of a… keep them off me!” Wyatt said while still fiddling around with a contraption of his. This really wasn’t a time to hack stu…

A bolt flew pas Wyatt’s ear and into the eye of a rabid looking splicer, igniting as the deformed creature screamed in the raging fires, heading for a pool of water. As soon as it had entered the pool, Wyatt zapped the pool and the splicer along with it. As the former man hit the ground, Wyatt said: “Thanks.”

Sally nodded before she aimed her crossbow somewhere else. The cries grew louder as more of the ‘pack’ tuned in. There had to be dozens of splicers heading for the smell of the ADAM wafting from the corpse’s intestines. The bath Darren had succeeded in making the girl take, although perpetually dragged in rags, had masked the girl’s pheromone signature with several scented brews to throw off Big Daddies and splicers alike. But Ernie and Buck’s brews couldn’t repress the ADAM smell out in the open and now they were hurling fire at the little girl. Darren quickly created a Decoy before zapping a splicer nearly spitting mucus hanging from his teeth over the corpse and the Little Sister. What if… he thought.

Pulling a green polyp from his back and throwing at the splicer he just zapped, he commanded or rather hypnotized it to start attacking the other madmen. At the same time, he dug into the corpse and non-verbally dared the Little Sister to harvest more ADAM than him like they did the first time. The girl showed something reminiscent of a smile hanging from her face as the others held their ground. Shotgunning one splicer after the other, Ernie mowed through the attackers as Buck kept his Research camera rolling and creating more rewards through it. They wouldn’t be able to keep this up for long though.
“Wyatt, I hate to be stating the obvious and be rude as well, but do you really think this is the best time to do your engineering stuff?” Sally said.

Wyatt turned to her as he powered up his contraption with a flash of lightning from his fingertips.

“Yes,” he said.

The lights on the modified turret turned green as it spun its machine guns and fired on everything in range, being wonderfully programmed to not attack the people in his group. Eddie wasn’t about to find out if it was flawless or not.

“Get down, Claire!” he yelled as he jumped, then huddled over her as the bullets flew over their heads as if they were mindless killer bees hovering over them. “You okay?”

“I’m alright, Eddie,” Claire said.

“Darren, how’s the thing doing? What’s your progress?” Wyatt said as he turned around.

Sandy blasted another splicer with an icy touch before Charlie smashed it to pieces, as Sandy said: “Why are they retreating?”

“Insane people don’t retreat, they lose interest,” Wyatt said as he looked on as well.

The few splicers that had already caught sight of a target kept attacking before stab in their heart ended their struggle for life. Wyatt’s stationary turret took care of the last of them. Soon, only the crawling sounds of a few, disinterested splicers remained.

“What happened?” Charlie asked.

“The harvesting is finished,” Darren said as he looked to the Little Sister wiping her bloody face after gorging the ADAM.

Darren looked at the red goo in his syringe and contemplated its effect on him. He quickly gave it to the sister, who happily downed the disgusting mix of human remains.

“Why’d you do that Darren? You earned it,” Sandy said as she was sure Darren had sped up the harvesting process immensely with his little ‘competition’.

“Raw ADAM… is dangerous,” Ernie chipped in.

“The Little Sisters were only sent out and taught to recycle ADAM from corpses because they couldn’t produce enough by themselves in their symbiotic relationship with the ADAM slug, which also produced far less without the sinister union in the girl’s stomach,” Buck said.

“Due to this bond, they are immune to the effect of raw ADAM on the drinker’s mind and body and they can regurgitate safe and useable ADAM on a later occasion. It was usually done in a lab, now… we will process it with some home-made equipment. Good thing Heavy never lets those on duty ever check the ADAM we give before they filter it,” Ernie said.

“Or else they would’ve found out the purity of ADAM as opposed to that hogwash they offered us,” Wyatt said. “Hold on Sandy… We’ll have to save those First aid kits. Let’s tend to our wounds when we’re back at the basement.
The others had looked on seriously disgusted, yet mesmerized as Darren had managed to make the Little Sister put her finger in her throat and spout out the ADAM into a small bottle as if she was a fountain. Or a money machine.

Ernie and Buck had brought it to the improvised filtering department and came back with their share of the ADAM. It wasn’t much, but when they handed it over to Darren, he knew exactly what to do, as taught by the Little Sister when she’d healed his shoulder. He laced his palms with ADAM, rubbed them over the many wounds the others had sustained and within minutes, the gashes closed, burns made way for healthy looking skin and muscles could move again, their nerves no longer twitching.

Finally, a stroke of good luck.

[Scriptor Scorpio]

I feel nice and awful at the same time, I wonder why?


Chapter XXV: Healing and growth, part 2

“Dr. Alexander, do you have the report I asked you for?” Ryan said.

“Yes Mr. Ryan, I have it here,” Dr. Alexander said.

“Read it to me if you will,” Ryan said.

“Very well ehm… We lost a number of Alpha series, Epsilon, Zeta and so forth, we believe they killed a former victim of child abuse, Jack Michaels, several members of Father Wales ‘flock’, they took a chunk out of the horde close to Talos Trappings, as well as loyal supporters of Rapture, among them Charles McKinley, Ian Mann, Lyra Mann, Jamie Iverson, Frederic Green, Ruben Green, Levi Green, Benny Brown, Christopher Kimball, Crystal Kimball, Chase Norton, Rachel Danes, Elisa Norton… the list goes on. The casualties among the horde blocking any access to Talos Trappings could not be properly identified. Also, they helped in taking down one of our more recent Big Daddies and killed a Little Sister. For her ADAM I suppose,” Dr. Alexander said.

“Those savages and this substance… If only I could bring back Fontaine from the dead and punish him much more for what he’s done to my city with his… discovery. Tenenbaum has disappeared and the Little Sisters are dwindling. See to it that the ADAM gets to the true citizens of Rapture and start working… on stronger Big Daddies.”

“And the target group, now that they have joined Atlas?” Dr. Alexander asked.

“Yes well, whatever the case, they will not escape this place alive. Keep monitoring them,” Ryan said. “And start our first trial, according to Dr. Suchong’s specifications.”

“Yes, Mr. Ryan,” Dr. Alexander said.


“Miss Finn, I know you must realize why I summoned you,” the man in the leather chair said.

As Adelaide looked around the ravaged room, she nodded and subsequently said: “Yes, Mr. Maines.”

The man that had invited her to join the Sinclair Solutions Customer Reward program, an invitation she’d gladly accepted, had asked to meet with her.

“The tests have gone swimmingly and most importantly, you’re not dead,” Mr. Maines said and laughed half-heartedly. “I however am afraid your promised vacation will have to wait. Normally me and my employer, Mr. Sinclair himself, wouldn’t cheer for either of the degenerate sides fighting this war, but in that prospect we ran into a little problem: we can’t get out of here. We need you to coerce them into going from peace to a peaceful retreat out of Rapture and back into the topside world, or ram through whatever side opposes you when things turn sour. We have a few gifts to help you to do just that.”

Mr. Maines put his briefcase on his three-legged desk and clicked it open. Inside the red glare of the plasmid and gene tonic vials beckoned for Adelaide. She could actually get out of here.

“Will you accept this offer and your promise that goes with it?” Mr. Maines said.


“Not long now before the truce meetings. Maybe we won’t need these things after all,” Sandy said.

“Things you say, but I call them Jimmy and Ada,” Wyatt said as he lovingly fastened a bolt on one of his security bots. He needed just a few more parts to get them airborne again and then Ryan would want to seriously watch himself.

“We’ve all upgraded. Sally’s bought Electro Bolt, Insect Swarm, Headhunter, Clever Inventor, Prolific Inventor, Natural Camouflage, Scrounger… We’ve become trusted because of our ADAM supply and even given the right to keep some of it as we slaughter more and more Ryanists… It just doesn’t feel right or even… I can’t seem to feel anything lately,” Sandy said.

Wyatt figured he should say something, when Darren walked in. Sandy’s face instantly lit up. It lessened a bit when she saw the girl following behind him, but not as much as she used to. The thing had started to grow on her. Maybe she even called it a she from time to time.

“Wyatt, you won’t forget that thing I asked you to check?” Sandy said.

“I won’t. And tell Buck just because he had so many Brain Boosts lately, that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be looking for spare parts for me,” Wyatt said as he muttered a curse under his breath as well, fiddling around in ‘Ada’.

“I’ll go tell Buck that so, yeah,” Sandy said as she passed Darren and the Little Sister by and went up the stairs.

Making sure no one was there to see her do so, she left the abandoned basement and went to the filtering department where she found Ernie and Buck fiddling around in the brew of raw ADAM they’d cooked up.

“Hey guys, how’s it going?” Sandy said.

“Pretty good, it’s nearly done,” Buck said. “I figured out a way to get more out of it with my well, improved network.”

Buck tapped his temple and Sandy nodded.

“Oh good and Wyatt asked you to get those spare parts he needed,” Sandy said.

“No prob,” Buck said.
Sandy had wanted to leave as she turned around and noticed Buck wasn’t the only one that had been downing gene tonics.

“Ernie, you’re looking buff today,” Sandy said as she pinched his arm in slight bewilderment. “It’s almost as tough as steel. Great.”

“Thanks Sandy, appreciate it. I’ll be earning my keep from now on,” Ernie said.

Sandy smiled and went on her way again.


“Have you been keeping an eye on Eddie if he’s keeping Claire in check?” Wyatt asked Darren.

“Yes, it’s been going good so far. She’s still jiggity around me with me carrying the creepy girl bag and all. Whenever she seems like she’s going to say something about it, I ask her if she wants to take a peek inside,” Darren said while the Little Sister looks around curiously singing some twisted lullaby. And grammatically incorrect to boot.

“That’ll keep her quiet alright,” Wyatt said and let out a chuckle. “Maybe we can get on with our lives after all, even with all that has happened.”

“I don’t wanna talk about it, give it a rest. Work on your bot,” Darren said.

“I, I’m sorry… Forget what I said. We’ll go out for a run in a few hours, alright?” Wyatt said and returned to work on his contraption. He seemed to fare better in working with machines than in anything involving people.

An hour later, Heavy called everyone together for something special and he ordered everyone to attend. The group of Atlas supporters under Heavy wasn’t that big, not many were left after the surprise attacks that the Ryanists had been plaguing them with. Nonetheless they were all very curious about what all the big fuss was about.

“Ladies and Gentlemen supporting the Great Atlas against the vile Ryan and his Rapture, I’d like you to meet a great heroine in our latest battles here in Talos Trappings against our enemies and she should be treated accordingly. Her name… is miss Adelaide Finn,” Heavy said.

The lady dressed in green stepped forward and kept her trademark no-nonsense pose as she held onto her revolver. Not that she needed it anymore.

“Although I remember her as the girl that put a bullet in my skull,” Heavy said and laughed whole-heartedly. He seemed to be an easy forgiver. As long as you reel in the ADAM or build up the Ryanist headcount that is.

“Addie!” Sally yelled as she rushed forward to give her old friend a hug. Sandy and the others soon gathered around to do the same as Claire and Eddie just stood by the side, which didn’t dampen the mood at all.

They wanted to hear all about what she’d done while she was gone and even completely forgot about why she did so for a moment. They slowly started to connect the dots between the wicked witch that had been terrorizing the Ryanists and good old Addie that used to eyeball any target and shoot it dead-center if provoked. A lot had changed indeed.

“It has reached a working concentration, Mr. Ryan,” Dr. Alexander said.

[Scriptor Scorpio]

It's a bit slower, but it's quite some development Don't wanna rush it and pack stuff too much together.


Chapter XXVI: Healing and growth, part 3

And so Addie told her friends about what she’d been through and what new plasmids and gene tonics she had received. The power she’d spliced into her genetic code, making her near invincible on the battlefield against the Ryanists. Now however, she was assigned to protect the delegates of Atlas his joined rebel forces while keeping an eye on the treacherous followers of Ryan. She only realized she had been transferred to the area her friends where fighting at when she arrived. She’d shed a tear or two when she was reunited With Sandy, Darren, Wyatt and the others. She noticed how much they’d all changed in just a few weeks: Ernie had grown buff, Buck was starting to rival Wyatt’s sharp mind and Sandy had deep lines drawn in her face. Claire tried to avoid Addies gaze. Now that she has grown that much more dangerous, Addie could instill fear in Claire just by existing. Claire quietly hid herself behind Eddie who was moving his nostrils and looking around for something.

“Now it’s time we show you something, but it’s very important nobody follows us,” Sandy said to Addie. She nodded.

Splitting into a few distinct groups, Sandy, Addie and the others took long winded paths to eventually end up at the basement. Sandy, Darren and Wyatt knew they could trust her with this. They descended down the stairs as Ernie and Buck made sure nobody saw all of them enter. Then Darren opened his bag.

“Will we go out to find some angels too, B?” the girl said as her two glowing eyes peaked out, curious.

Adelaide was slightly taken aback as she visibly distanced herself from the bag with its inhuman content.

“How the hell did you get that thing? Why isn’t it screaming for its… protector?” Adelaide said.

“You can thank Darren for that,” Sandy said with a smile and nodded with her head over to her stepbrother.

“Impressive like always, Darren. You’ve done a great deal to protect them,” Addie said and formed a tiny smile as her lips curled in between the blinks of an eye.

“I do what I can,” Darren replied.

And so they told her what they had been doing all this time, quite clearly contradicting what they had said before in public about their ‘Big Daddy raids’. But they had been sucking dry corpses and improving themselves. Addie no longer had the moral high ground. They were all splicers now. They were all more than human and also something less than human.

Something… different.

They had to disperse again in order to avoid attracting attention. Using Scout, a plasmid that worked as a kind of conscious running ahead without being seen or heard but hearing and seeing itself, Sally had heard local buzz about them supposedly being involved in a conspiracy to overthrow both Atlas and Ryan and taking Rapture for themselves. Some even linked them to Sofia Lamb or Father Wales. Apparently the latter was still alive after Addie tried to shoot him in the face.

Everyone knew something was looming above them and it wasn’t rain. Maybe it was the conspiracy, maybe the Ryanists were planning something or maybe it was something vastly different. The truce meetings made everyone feel uneasy. Tomorrow they would begin and for the first time since the beginning of the civil war, as the papers called it now, the fighting had ended. A fragile armistice had been called into being. Anyone breaking it was to be shot on sight.

One by one, Sandy and the others slipped out of the basement with Darren tucking away the Little Sister back into suboptimal oxygenated conditions, in the stuffy bag. As Addie prepared to go up, Wyatt stopped her.

“Could I borrow your revolver? I’d like to make some adjustments to it for you,” Wyatt said.

“Eh sure Why-why,” Addie said and handed over her trusted revolver, which she still consider to be an old friend she was leaving in someone else’s care.

“I’ll take good care of it,” Wyatt said as he returned to his work on the turrets and bots he’d been modifying.

Eddie looked around at the people that were just standing around now they couldn’t rip the guts out of trespassing Ryanists and there was nothing left to burn or electrocute. They were bored and yet they were not alone. Some of them were growing closer to each other, even though they came from different parts of Rapture and different kinds of people. He’d always been too tough to really show it, but inside Eddie felt a bit weaker at times. Every time Claire cringed at the sight of peril.

Since they took her away from Fort Frolic, kidnapped her off stage as she’d called it, she hadn’t let anyone come near her, especially not Eddie who’d picked her up ignoring anything she might’ve said. Now he knew she was hurt inside at the time, both mentally and physically. What Cohen did to her through his disciple was unforgivable and Eddie wished he could’ve killed both of them. His previous male ‘star’ had undoubtedly disappeared by force. The whole thing disgusted him more than he thought it would. But it made him shiver all over every time he thought about it. In all these weeks, Claire hadn’t once changed her clothes and she was still moving around barefoot and in the formerly pristine white dress, tainted by dark red blood. As he had watched Adelaide passing, he’d noticed Claire hiding behind him, but she’d backed away when he’d tried to comfort her. But now, he suddenly felt the warmth and comfort of her embrace. Tucking her head against his shirt, she said: “Promise you will protect me against Finn, against all of them.”

“I…I promise,” Eddie said.

Then either of them didn’t say anything for a while and just stood there silently.

Darren and Sandy were walking along the borders of the streets that the rebels of Atlas controlled, that they had helped conquer.

“We’ve come a long way haven’t we?” Sandy said. Darren nodded.

They walked a bit further while Sandy tried to put together what she wanted to say and what she was thinking at the moment. Then she said: “Here, this is for you.” She handed Darren a worn piece of paper before continuing, “it was in the archives and I thought you might like it. I asked Wyatt to find it. Go on, take a look.”

Darren looked to Sandy as her cheeks mildly blushed and then studied the paper, all wrinkled and torn. It said something about a girl that supposedly died about a year ago. She had wavy shiny midnight black hair like Sandy’s and delightful green eyes and said to be about ten years old when she passed away. Her name was Lilly Bradford. She was their Little Sister, now eleven years old.

“I figured we could call her that, Lilly, instead of well… ehm…” Sandy said as she didn’t really want to say ‘thing’ to Darren. He seemed to like the little tyke well Lilly as much as he liked Sandy.

“Yes, thank you,” Darren said as he put her arms around Sandy and held her in a tight embrace.

Ernie and Buck were all alone at the ADAM filtering house. Ernie Donner had been thinking about a lot of things a lot lately, but whether it was the civil war escalating, the truce meetings being tomorrow or his bigger muscles making him rely more on them than on his slightly above average mind, with Buck filling in the gaps… Whether it was any of those, things had become a lot clearer.

When he saw a girl the other day, she smiled at him, yet he didn’t smile back. It wasn’t that she was ugly or anything or that he was in a foul mood with all the things he and the others had gone through, but he just wasn’t interested in her at all. He could see she knew and that he hurt her, but he couldn’t bring himself to return her feelings. All those months ago, when he’d lived and worked at Fontaine Futuristics, he’d been good friends with a man called Arthur Portley. He had blond, curly hair and deep brown eyes and the kindest heart. He thought he had forgotten about him. Today, he couldn’t stop thinking about him.

Cautiously so nobody could hear him, Ernie said to Buck: “I think… I think I might like men.”

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Warning: may go above PG-13.


Chapter XXVII: Healing and growth, part 4

Adelaide was breathing in the soothing air wafting through Talos Trappings this afternoon. Maybe the oxygen supply was lessening and she was getting delusional and soon unconscious, but she felt almost happy. Whatever would happen tomorrow, she now had a purpose. She had power. She was with her friends and she would make sure nothing happened to them whatever it took. She had everything and she felt good. Someone had hacked the intercom, Why-why without a doubt, and it was now playing Sandy’s favorite song. Addie remembered her listening to it in silence, eyes closed and just swaying from one side to the other as the soothing sound echoed through the neighbourhood. All those years ago. And now it had returned.

We'll meet beyond the shore
we'll kiss just as before
Happy we'll be beyond the sea
and never again I'll go sailin'

I know beyond a doubt
my heart will lead me there soon

Wyatt… did he still have that crush on Sandy? That everybody knew he had except Sandy? Darren knew… and he was more straightforward with his affections for her, at least as a brother. But Addie knew that look he had now. It was the same as Why-why’s… and hers when she looked in the mirror. That ship seemed to have sailed a long time ago.

As she stumbled along the avenue pondering how far that metaphorical ship had gone now, somebody called for her. She didn’t immediately respond so it was only after someone put his hand on her shoulder that she instinctively reacted with a plasmid aimed at the floor. A tenth of second afterwards a jet stream of water spouted upwards and tossed her attacker into the air before he landed on the ground. It was Heavy.

He gagged a few times before he spat out some water and blood and staggered to stand up again. He looked at Addie, seemingly not mad at all about the accidental plasmid shove and reached out his hand. Addie struggled for a second to get what he wanted, before she handed over a first aid kit for his collapsed lung. She didn’t want to nearly kill him again, did she? That’s what she expected he’d say, but instead he said: “Thanks.”

“Sorry for that bullet, I…” Adelaide said, bringing up the embarrassment Heavy was trying to avoid.

“You were trying to protect your friends, weren’t you?” Heavy said. Addie nodded.

“We all are trying to protect the ones we love. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes… we fail,” Heavy said.

The big man went to sit down on a bench as he stroke his beard and his blue eyes glistened in the evening lights. He was thinking of something he hadn’t thought about for a long while, for months he had repressed it. Something Addie missed and so could never miss it when it was gone and taken from her. Something more profound.

“I don’t know who made our clothes,” Adelaide said.

Heavy looked up and narrowed his eyes as his memories grew brighter and brighter in the back of his mind. He remembered what he’d said to her and her friends when they first met. He’d told them about his wife.

“Do you want me to tell you about her, a little seamstress in Rapture, daughter of a wealthy textile mogul?” Heavy said.

“Yes, please,” Addie said.

Heavy nodded and gestured for her to come sit with him as he told the story of his wife, his wonderful wife. She had spirit, he’d always loved that she had spirit more than a bottle of scotch. Out of all the men in Rapture, all the entrepreneurs, she picked him. Her father disowned her and she was even happier. As a seamstress she didn’t make much. She made excellent work but Ryan didn’t pay her as much as he should. With her braid hanging over her shoulder, she worked day and night in her little shop and greeted everyone who came by, even the man that came to pick up the clothes she made and tossed a dime or two on her dresser for the effort. She even greeted Ryan, who didn’t look at her once or greeted her back. Who was she anyway? She never said she was the wife of John Mackey, just the sweet and kind seamstress Ellie Mackey, the only thing she wanted to change. Her last name. She was determined to bring in her share and be dependent of no one’s fame or money. But she did love him with all her heart, almost as much as he loved her. But it wasn’t enough. One day she went to Ryan’s office and asked to be paid more for her hard work and the nice clothes she consistently made. It only got ugly when she lost her temper and showed just how much spirit a young woman could have. Under the guise of her being a threat to the Great Chain and Rapture with its free market and everyone earning the sweat of their brow, with her demanding ‘her share’, Ryan sentenced her to death. John Mackey, or Heavy in other words, spoke her once and pleaded for her to apologize, for him. She wouldn’t listen. That’s when he started hating Ryan. It increased more and more as he met others that Ryan had shown his true face to: that of a tyrant. Either you enjoyed his privileges which suited your eternal, accustomed lifestyle as the rich, or you didn’t and wanted him dead. No in-betweens. Except maybe Addie and her group. Heavy recognized a bit of Ellie in Addie with her long brown locks he was now holding between his fingers. She didn’t pull them away.

“We both lost our chance at love and we’ll never get it back,” Addie said.

“Let’s accept our faith and presumably our untimely end and choose something more fleeting instead,” Heavy said. They then went into the ally and closed themselves off from the world for a few fleeting moments.


Sally heard a lot of noise as she came down the stairs into the abandoned basement as Wyatt was busily working on something.

“Wyatt?” she said.

“Just a few minutes, I’m working on my latest breakthrough. Could you hand me that wire over there?” Wyatt said.

Sally nodded even though Wyatt wasn’t even looking at her and handed over the wire. The scatterbrained engineer completely forgot again that she was there and continued his work with him now working in the crucial wire. Sally probably called him a couple of more times, because the seemingly first time he heard it she was almost yelling, though he still was slow to respond. Sally didn’t know what to do, how could she get his attention to explain to him that she… Suddenly, she zapped him, making him jolt upright and turn around as his own electrobolt cells tried to absorb and tone down the dangerous voltage.

“What the hell, why did you zap me?” he uttered before stopping as he’d seen the tender look on Sally’s face. “I… I’m sorry. You have the parts I need, err, I mean I’m all yours, what can I do for you?”

“I just needed to tell you that, I always felt there was a spark between us,” she said before kissing him on the cheek, blushing her own cheeks into the brightest red and running back up the stairs out of the basement. Wyatt stood dumbstruck.


Silently Darren and Sandy had walked back to the sleeping arrangements directions Heavy had given them for the night. They came to the door as little Lilly had started yawning, just a bit too loud so Darren had to shush here without anyone catching on, while Sandy pretended she was the one that yawned like an eleven year old girl. Sometimes she did. They hadn’t said anything else to each other on the way over here and the leaflet with Lilly’s background had been a small gesture and yet as Darren looked up to Sandy, they both knew something had changed. As if they were hypnotized and in being tricked they realized how much they cared for each other, always had. Everybody else had always come second, including themselves. They’d always been afraid to outright show it as they knew each other since they were children. But they loved each other as something else than just stepbrother and sister. After dropping off Lilly at the basement where Wyatt was working as always, they held each other in a tight embrace once more and turned their gaze onto the other. Both of their blue eyes shimmered in the flickering light of the lamp as they leaned in closer and their lips merged into one enduring kiss.

“I will always protect you,” he said. And he would.

As they fell on the bed, they only felt comfort in each other’s arms. After months of slaughtering fellow humans, they now created life.

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Chapter XXVIII: The morning after, the morning before

“The tests are a success, Mr. Ryan,” Dr. Alexander said.

“Excellent. Make all the necessary preparations. This war shall end through love and loyalty, one way or another,” Ryan said. “The city of Rapture will be on the rise once more.”


It was the next morning. There was a different scent in the air today, but it was almost as pleasant as the one that had been lingering in the streets up till last night. The people of Rapture awoke, both the rebels of Atlas and the supporters of Ryan. And Sandy’s group.

Ernie and Buck were quietly working on their research. The former’s revelation had surprised Buck a bit, but he accepted it as a part of a friend he’d grown close with since they accidentally took each other’s gene tonic.

“I remember we did experiments with polyps to do a number of things. We found we needed the plasmid wielder to generate living things, parasites or other organic forms of life to do certain biological things, among other specifications the market was begging for,” Ernie said. “In plain English, photo-electric insects contained in a polyp that burst open when it hit a living target, to command security to a threat by nesting on them, a new type of insect that grew from your arm and attacked in a vicious swarm, like the one you and Sally have and a polyp of sorts that enraged a target enough to turn on his allies. But also, there was a hypnotize polyp like the plasmid Darren has equipped. Dr. Suchong was busy developing these further when he… got drilled to the table by a Big Daddy, ironically the first one to react to the doctor’s shoving of its Little Sister. Dr. Alexander took over after that.”

“And this sample could have come from a polyp line? You recognize the doctor’s signature?” Buck asked.

“No doubt about it,” Ernie said. “But we’ll have to study it more to figure out its function. Perhaps we can even make our own plasmids and gene tonics when we do. With your mind and my knowledge.”

“That’s… interesting,” Buck said.


Wyatt had been working all night on his turrets, improving them every hour or so. He hadn’t been paying much attention to anything around him, until he heard something ruffling. He turned around to see the bag Darren had been keeping that thing in, ‘Lily’ as he had discovered for Sandy through various and illegal hacking methods. He tried to turn his attention back to his work when he heard it humming some eerie tune. Then ‘it’ laughed childishly and said: “You always save me from the monsters, daddy.”

Wyatt muttered something before getting back to his inventions. Once again he whispered it to himself: “Not all monsters.”


Ever so gently, as she didn’t know any other way, Sandy awoke to the morning light of Talos Trappings. She knew it wasn’t natural or that it was even morning, but she was used to it and she loved how it lit up her face just before she smiled feeling the warmth tickle her cheeks, even as a grown woman.

She turned to see Darren greeting her smile with one if his own and it made her smile even wider, as she knew how rare his were. She covered her face with a pillow a bit embarrassed she couldn’t stop smiling before she asked:

“Do you remember when you went away for a while with Dad to a whole other part of Rapture and Mom and I really missed you? I know how glad I was to see you again. It felt like a year, but it couldn’t have been, right?”

Darren turned away and started putting on his shoes and buttoning his shirt. As he stood up and he turned his head, Sandy saw his smile had disappeared.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” he said as he tried to leave.

Sandy grabbed his arm and he looked at her as she pulled him towards her. Her arm wasn’t as pristine white as it was before. The ice crystals had begun to spike, the electricity jolted from one end to the other and her skin had an eerie red glow. She refused to use more ADAM then would normally be her share. He’d make sure she remained the sparkling beautiful woman she’d always been.

“I’m sorry I’ll drop it, please stay,” she said as she pressed her lips against his.

Then they got dressed for the truce meetings. Finally, this war would end.


Every single unit in Talos Trappings and the surrounding areas had gathered on the side of the district controlled by Atlas’ rebels. On the other side, all the Ryanists gathered as well as they dropped of all their weapons at stashes hidden deep in their half of the district. But plasmids couldn’t be taken away. Every eye a splicer possessed remained weary and hostile at the sight of any burn flaking arm or jolts of electricity running across someone’s forearm from the elbow. It had been requested by both parties that they set up the stands on an open space where everyone would be equally as vulnerable to crossbow shooters and more. If one of them went down and the truce meetings came to an abrupt end with the ensuing bloodshed, as much blood of Atlas’ rebels would be spilled as would that of the Ryanists, if they could still bleed. Set in up half circles the strongest supporters of each side sat on hastily made wooden chairs on platforms and were lined off from the other side and the filthy plaza with bags of sand, as they surrounded the marvelously made engineer chairs with the greatest comfort in which the leaders and the debaters would be seated. The others, like most of Sandy and her group, stood behind the elevated rows of chairs while keeping a safe distance from the forsworn enemies who would most probably break the truce any second now.

Heavy was acting on Atlas’ behalf just in case some vile Ryanist got it in his head to end the rebellion once and for all by killing the working class hero himself. Still as Heavy was quite high-ranked, he was heavily guarded by the strongest splicers, including Adelaide. They exchanged looks briefly before turning both their attention to the red-headed woman that walked through the door.

She was quite beautiful with her long flowing green dress and wavy crimson red hair sleeked besides her cheeks. That what was you saw at first glance, apart from the scar that ran from her widow’s peak through her eyebrows over her nose and to her jaw. She’d been from a rich family before all of this happened, but she’d been hardened by the war and taken charge so it seemed. She seemed quite spliced up in some places too, almost as if it was done at strategical places.

She took her seat across from Heavy and said:

“Let us begin, John.”

Heavy seemed just a bit uncomfortable before he said:

“Good. We’ll start right away Clarice Carisse.”

The negotiations about the things that needed to change were long and tedious. Usually the most prominent members of every side spoke up almost every few minutes at the outrageous claims and demands the other side laid in front of them, but both Heavy and the red-headed woman named Clarice calmed their supporters and continued to debate in an almost civil way about very uncivil topics. What about the labor laws, the housing, moral standards, religious views… and then came the free market. And the crowd roared.

[Scriptor Scorpio]

My apologies for the longer wait, I had a lot of work and was tired. Now enough excuses... it's time for the final act.


Chapter XXIX: Stealing votes… or the fall of Rapture

“Do whatever is necessary. The Great Chain shall be rattled until every weak link is replaced,” Ryan said to Dr. Alexander for perhaps the final time. “This ends here.”


Heavy and Clarice tried to demand order on the plaza, but it had no use, as the people had raised their voice until they were shouting every single word they spoke and tried to exceed the volume of the unparticular person at the other side they tried to outdo. Some made death threats repeatedly and over and over again with seemingly no end to all who called himself a bit of a Ryanist, while another answered the threats with solemn vows they would burn every rebel alive. Lines were crossed that hadn’t been crossed since the last great war that brought all of the former citizens of Rapture to it. They were still fighting with words and threatening gestures, but as more metaphorical oil was added to the inferno the truce meetings had become at the sound of the word ‘free market’, the shouting wouldn’t last long. Most people who had Incinerate! had burned through their seats or the barricades, those with Winter Blast dropped the temperature around them with 3 degrees as their hearts grew cold, others with Electro Bolt charged to strike their randomly chosen opponent’s heart to stop it and tear their lungs apart. In their blind fury they could only vaguely remember why they were here in the first place with those rats or those fascists and they had just enough sanity left that they demanded their leaders to give them the keys to the weapon vaults so they could satisfy their bloodlust; which with some was an actual gene tonic.

“Enough!” Heavy yelled as he threw a sonic boom with his arm to silence the rebels on his side. It would be the last straw if he’d done the same with the Ryanists and so Clarice followed his example by releasing a swarm of insects that ate away at her supporters until they settled down and she called them back.

“We shall discuss ‘it’ as civilized people because we still are civil and not savage beasts like those waiting outside our doors,” Heavy said.

“We ask our supporters for complete and utter silence and respect as we try to find a solution, lest innocent people die. Is that understood?” Clarice said and even Atlas’ rebels nodded.

“Now, the first note Heavy has asked me to bring up, is Fontaine Futuristics and its ownage. You got something to say Sanford?” Clarice said as she looked to an overweight business man with a large mustache who tried his dearest to subtly show he was vehemently opposed to the idea.

“No, ma’am,” Sanford said.

“Good, let us continue,” Clarice said.

And so, the negotations that were originally truce meetings continued in peace. Everytime Clarice said something not even Heavy could find himself in, he had to control his supporters first so they wouldn’t go breaking the truce out of boredom when he was left to privately negotiate. He didn’t say so though and instead underlined that they were all entitled and obligated to hear it, as it was their future as much as his. Clarice said much the same to her supporters, but you saw how strong of a supporter she was of the Ryanist ideals. Less so of their execution. It became late, the lights were dimming and Sandy and the others snuck away to get a little break after standing up all day. They wouldn’t miss them. Adelaide couldn’t leave as she was Heavy’s bodyguard, sadly. Claire did seem strangely cheery as she allowed Eddie to offer her his shoulder to rest on.

They looked around the group. Including Adelaide, there were only ten of them left now. Eleven if you counted the Little Sister, Lilly. They had all been quiet for so long about the deaths they had caused, but even more about the friends they had lost. They didn’t quite know what to say now all their sorrow seemed to have come at an end and they could finally survive a little bit easier.

Darren and Sandy held hands as they’d grown to feel quite warm inside, finally being together with their friends and each other. Wyatt seemed to have accepted they were meant to be together and there was no hatred or jealousy. Even Claire didn’t spoil the moment, seeing as she was softly sleeping and so they stood there together. Then Sally said: “Let us not forget how we got here.”

There was a dreadful silence for a moment, but then Wyatt said: “Yes, we shouldn’t forget what and who was sacrificed so we could live to see this brighter day.”

“With our friends,” Buck said.

“And family,” Ernie added.

“I’ll never forget… Archibald and his poor sense of humor,” Eddie said as Claire opened her eyes at the sound of the name, but Eddie didn’t notice. “He always tried his hardest to keep us entertained though. He was a smart fellow too. He gave everything to protect us, even those he’d never met before.”

“I’ll remember… Mandy, for always going out sightseeing with me and being the one to confide in for everything. She… didn’t have to die,” Sally said as she grew wide-eyed. “Oh I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to… I’m sorry.”

“We all miss them, Sally,” Wyatt said and pulled a faint smile, which was quite something for him, so she returned it ten times fold.

“I like your dress a lot, Sandy,” Sally said gesturing at Sandy’s change of attire after she’d been walking around in her pale yellow dress since New Year. After Sandy spent the night with Darren, she believed it was time as she’d offered her virgin flower to Darren so it could bloom. And it was starting to smell horrendously, overpowering any perfume, except perhaps the smell in the air yesterday. Her wavy navy blue dress shone like the deep blue sea in the lights of Rapture and was draped around her elegantly as she felt radiant. And happy.

“Six times two is lemon… The air is full of ADAM… Clear as rainbows. Time to find the angels. Bubbles and sunshine, bubbles and rain. Bubbles and sunshine, bubbles and rain. I wanna see the sunshine, show me the sunshine! Sleepy angels shine, ADAM shines!” it sounded from the bag.

“I believe she’s hungry,” Sandy said with a smile to Darren.

Her beloved stepbrother nodded and proceeded to make the preparations along with Wyatt. The others would join in soon… They only hoped they could find a body far enough from all the hungry splicers at the plaza.


“The sweat of our brow… Could we receive it in full, this time?” Heavy asked.

“Yes, I believe so,” Clarice said as she looked to her supporters, but they were no longer looking at her or listening to the conversation.

Across of them, there was a mother letting her newborn drink. She seemed like a filthly labor woman whose blouse was torn from the fights and the hungry baby. She didn’t seem to take care of herself, except when it came to keeping alive, to feed her baby. Even them had children they wanted to keep safe and well-nourished. They weren’t a lower class of people, just a different one. Why their hard work was less worth than theirs, the industrials and the engineers, they couldn’t fathom at the moment.

However fragile this child was, one day it would be a valuable part of society. Their children weren’t any different when they were so small. The Ryanists just hummed as they agreed to the proposal: a decent pay for all of Rapture’s citizens.


“The Great Chain Rattles! Gas them, gas them all! The jews didn’t deserve this fate, but do these communists do! Destroy them before the destroy my city!” Ryan said through the line with Dr. Alexander as he closed off his office until judgment day would come. From his office, he would lead his city. From there, he would control everything and make sure the Great Chain would grow strong once again. From his secluded space, isolated from everyone else, he would put in his genetic key and gas the entirety of Rapture to restore order. With love.


A scream came flying into the group’s collective ears.

“Did you hear that?” Darren said.

“Hear what?” Wyatt asked as he was busy packing up his turrets.

Cries of agony filled the air as everyone rushed to the plaza in utter panic of what had just transpired there.

Ryan, Charlie thought. It’s always Ryan.

They arrived at the plaza. Ryan had betrayed his own ideals in a way no one could have foreseen.

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Sorry for the delay, here goes.


Chapter XXX: The evils of free will

However spliced they were, however less of men and women they had become, the citizens of Rapture had only been removed of their humanity by Ryan’s final act against the parasites by becoming one. Their free will was gone as they had become puppets of his chemical whims as they danced around on the national anthem of Rapture and Ryan ordered them around, instructing them on steps in ridiculous detail. They all exactly followed and obeyed his demands.

“Dr. Suchong’s pheromones can control ADAM-spliced humans,” Ernie immediately realized.

He threw a sonic boom to disperse the air as if it was poison that burned in their throats. He had to use all his EVE up, no matter what deformations such use would cause to him. He couldn’t become like them.

They had to run. Now. Away from any vents dispersing the pheromones. They couldn’t fathom what they saw between the splicers as their faces contorted in anguish and stupor at their bodies no longer doing what they wanted. Their minds slowly crumbled as had happened to the horde outside Talos Trappings. But between the splicers on the ground, dark red crusts began to form as all the blood that had been spilled just moments after Ryan’s treason was released into the air, dried and cracked. A mother and child laid with torn clothes and slashed throats on the floor as the baby was still suckling onto a bloodied breast.

All those who didn’t have enough ADAM in their system or had bought few gene tonics for the past few days that Ryan must have incorporated his chemical trigger in, Buck figured as Ernie covered their retreat, were slaughtered by the joined twisted force of Ryan. An unstoppable force.

Eddie wouldn’t let that happen to Claire, ever.

“EVE hypo!” Ernie yelled as Sally tossed him one.

He plunged it into his arm and released another sonic boom.

All those ADAM-less people, those that didn’t ‘evolve’ into monsters, were burned, shattered and fried by the murderous puppets of Ryan, the real monster. He wouldn’t let anyone go, especially not the group that had crossed him one time too many. Helping to control the free market, stealing and killing… Now they would be his slaves or his most tortured examples for the rest of the strays.

“There you are, parasites. Like vermin you sneak away from the man who wants to cure your disease, like insects you try to hide and evade my grip, the tug of the great chain, but no more! Bring them to me and then snap their necks,” Ryan said through the intercom.

Without as much as a hint on their sides, the splicers stopped dancing and raced across the bloodied plaza to oblige Ryan. Another sonic boom Ernie threw flung several of the splicers into the air, but they kept persisting. Soon they’d catch up and there was nowhere to run. The horde was still out there, there was no way past.

“What do we do?” Sally asked as she flung a spear telekinetically into a woman’s head.

Sally had lunch with her just the other day.

“I don’t know, there’s no way to run, I… We have to get somewhere the pheromones can’t reach us… We have to go there,” Sandy said as she gestured at the corridor to the very end of Rapture. There was still something there.

“There? Sandy we can’t go there, that’s Daedalus Dominion! It isn’t even attached to Talos Trappings anymore. Even if we go there, we’ll die, please,” Wyatt said as he threw a security turret with powerful fans to keep bending away the pheromones.

That awful smell of hypnotic chemicals, the stench of Ryan, it now filled the lungs of everyone they ever knew in Talos Trappings. Heavy, Clarice… it was too late for all of them.

“We have no other choice, run!” Sandy yelled.

Every time a splicer got past the security turret and Ernie’s sonic boom, the others struck with their plasmids, but they were running out of EVE fast. All their supplies were in the vault of Atlas’ rebels, what was left of them anyway, but going to get them would be suicide with that cloud filling every nook and cranny as they struggled to not breath it in.

Then they came. All three of them. Heavy, Clarice… and Adelaide.

Her cheeks were covered in blood, her teeth glistened as she licked them and she drew her big revolver that Wyatt had improved, from her cleavage as she spun the cilinder. She’d managed to smuggled it into the negotations, she knew they would fail. But not like this. Not like this.

She aimed at Sandy.

“What are you doing, please, remember who we are, fight it, do something to prove you’re stronger than that Addie!” Sandy yelled.

Addie fired and so did Darren.

“Whatever you need love,” Adelaide said as the hypnosis polyp got absorbed into her skin.

Darren pointed to Heavy and Clarice and ordered Adelaide to with his mind link to kill them. She obeyed as she seemingly smiled at him controlling her to protect them rather than to kill them. She still cried when she shot Heavy, again and again until he succumbed to the floor. Then she started flinging plasmids around and the others saw how horribly good she was in obliterating all that stood in her way. Geysers shot out of the floor as the splicers hit them, but not before Wyatt and Darren had charged each one with an electrobolt, killing every target in a second. Then, they hit the end of the corridor.

‘Bathysphere tunnel to Dedalus Dominion. Double rail-guided to ensure your safety,’ the sign said.

“Wyatt!” Sandy yelled as the hacker turned and saw the sign.

“Give me a minute,” Wyatt said he gestured for Eddie. Ernie was busy and he felt he was going to need some brute strength.

“Keep Claire safe,” Eddie said to Sandy.

“I will,” Sandy said as she threw a winter blast at a splicer before Charlie smashed it to bloody bits.

“I’m sorry Sandy, I’m really sorry, I… I don’t want to die,” Claire said shivering.

“Make sure everyone’s supplied with EVE, look in Darren’s bag.

“I’m sorry, what? That thing’s in there,” Claire said before getting Sandy’s darkest look she’d ever seen.

She ran over to the bag without a word, reached down into the bag and bit on her lip before pulling out the EVE hypos.

“She bit me, she kept biting me,” Claire muttered as she saw the bite marks were beginning to bleed.

Wrapping around a piece of her white dress around the wounds, making it shorter than it already was on stage for dancing and the other purpose Cohen had had in mind, she started passing around the hypos as she hid behind the others for cover against the plasmids. She jumped as Buck was set on fire. He used up his last First Aid kit and looked to Claire. She understood. More bite marks. That little runt was going to pay for this, Claire thought.

“Okay, when I say go, you rip open this hatch like a tin can, okay? The air supply and everything is just enough, so we have to be quick if we don’t want to drown in it, you ready?” Wyatt said.

“I got it,” Eddie said and braced himself.

“Go!” Wyatt yelled as one of his turrets beeped in distress and crashed into the floor, exploding on impact. He’d called it Ada.

Eddie pulled and pulled until finally he got it open. Wyatt jumped in started checking the systems for take-off.

“Everybody, get inside!” Eddie yelled.

Adelaide was getting shot far too many times as the strong hypnotize plasmid caused her to throw herself in front of Darren to protect him from the rain of bullets that came his way. Ryan had managed to get them to open the vaults. Clarice was holding Heavy’s grenade launcher and loading it.

To be continued…

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Chapter XXXI: Dawn of Dominion

“Shoot her!” Darren commanded.

Adelaide obliged and pulled the trigger on her revolver. The bullet flew through the air and dug itself deep into Clarice’s eye as she fell to the ground screaming. Then the screaming stopped.

“I can’t control her for much longer, the plasmid is telling me to let go!” Darren said.

He didn’t look back to the others as they were climbing into the bathysphere, but he wasn’t talking to himself. He tried to find the courage to do the only thing that would keep them alive.

“I can’t do it, I don’t want to…” Darren said as he squeezed the hypnotize plasmid until it broke.

“Darren, let go…” Adelaide said as she pushed him away. She dropped her revolver which slided all the way to Sandy’s feet. Sandy took one look at it and picked it up before electrocuting another splicer.

“Darren, take the security bot,” Wyatt said as he made the final preparations. He kept his head turned on the many dials and meters and tears streamed down from his eyes. He couldn’t show anyone.

Darren did what Wyatt said, sprinted to Sandy and the others and Ernie helped him close the door and lock it down. They looked on as Adelaide loosened her belt and revealed the edged blade hidden inside it for a final charge at the degenerate splicers, Ryan’s slaves. Darren must have felt when the control stopped, but he didn’t tell anyone and nobody asked for it. She could’ve come with them, but Darren would have to constantly regain control over her with his plasmid and when he fell asleep just one time, she could’ve slit all their throats before he could do anything about it. To zap her and protect Sandy. But he couldn’t make herself take her own life nor could he bring himself to end it with his own two hands. She’d die like she wanted to go.

Fighting.

Only the buzzing of the security bot briefly broke through the deafening silence in the bathysphere before Wyatt turned it off. Everyone was lonely at the bottom of the sea in an empty shell. Ryan hadn’t destroyed them, he’d done something far worse, something infinitely more inexcusable: he made them sacrifice their friend’s life to save their own. And as they sat like that in the bathysphere silently, some sobbing under their muffled robes or coat, others whisking away dirt in their eyes that just kept coming and others regretting having hated Adelaide and her no-nonsense approach, something else started to grow. Not only new life beginning and old lives continuing, but something darker and colder. Hatred. Revenge. Seething anger welling up like a storm. Ryan had to die for what he had done to them as well as the citizens of Rapture. They had to find Atlas and make him help them breach Hephaestus, where Ryan hid like a coward with his finger on a button. But first…

“W-where are we going?” Sandy said.

“Daedalus Dominion,” Wyatt said while keeping his back turned.

It was a torment just hearing her anguished voice, let alone seeing her beautiful face disrupted by the scorn Ryan had unleashed in her. Like a soft river overflowing and destroying everything in her path.

“Tell all of them about Daedalus Dominion please, Wyatt. I don’t think I can,” Darren said.

You could hear Wyatt taking a deep breath before he said: “Daedalus Dominion was once a proud department in the development of high tech Rapturian science. The best and brightest used it as an ultimate test batch for their experiments before they moved the Big Daddy training grounds to Fontaine’s tower. The people of Daedalus Dominion knew full well they’d been honored by receiving their district’s name and the namesake that came along with it. If only they had dug deeper in Greek mythology… Perhaps they knew what came, the fall of Rapture and they wanted to be the first district to do so. Anyway, they build a new tower on the bottom of the ocean. It was meant as an observatory where the bright minds could study the ocean, the city and look down upon Fontaine’s tower, the second highest building in Rapture. It became the highest when Icarus tower bent under the ocean’s pressure and crumbled, taking all the people in the district along with it as it struck holes in the hull of the Dominion of the best and brightest and they drowned. Talos Trappings’ engineers disconnected and distanced themselves from the failed testing ground both figuratively and literally. They just didn’t expect anyone would be crazy enough to actually try to go there again, but here we are. And we’re… doomed.”

“If we manage to survive, we can wait out the pheromone wave and develop something to counteract its effects. Whatever labs are still intact, they could provide us with the ADAM and tools we need,” Buck said.

“And then we return to kill Ryan,” Charlie said as he slammed his bat on the bathysphere’s hull. “For Addie.”

“For Addie,” everyone said in unison.

The quake that followed profoundly shook the disheveled group. They had arrived.

Wyatt nodded to Ernie and Eddie and they opened the door in good hope. There was air and they didn’t get flooded. It was a genuine miracle. They all toed out of the bathysphere and into to great hall that had collapsed on one side. Red curtains hung everywhere as a shrine to Ryan’s accomplishments as they had hung everywhere painted with golden empty phrases in the lighthouse they’d all passed through on their way to this hellhole all those years ago. As luck would have it, Ryan’s statue had been beheaded by a metal bar bearing a load, in the shape of a golf club.

“Let’s go onward, maybe we can find some food, I’m starving,” Wyatt said quickly and fired up his remaining security bot, Jimmy. Lonely it buzzed along and followed its lonelier master.

“Let’s follow him,” Darren said and offered his arm to Sandy, who gleefully accepted and laid her head to rest on his shoulder as they walked along.

Claire made a quick headcount. 2, 3,4, 6, 8 and Wyatt makes… 9. And that little brat. She wished she hadn’t counted. It reminded her of Archibald. Eddie was still with her and loved her no matter what horrible things she did. Why did she hurt him so much?


“I smell so much ADAM in the air…” the Little Sister mused in Darren’s bag. Sandy had taken it along in the bathysphere before Darren came running with the security bot called Jimmy.

They came to a waterfall of sorts: cold ocean water was streaming in through a tiny crack in the hard glass ceiling and showered a food stand that had severely started to rust. Everyone turned in horror as they heard the sound of a cylinder spinning. Darren looked to Sandy holding Addie’s big revolver and looking up to the others’ pale white faces, she put the cylinder back in place and looked down ashamed she’d just done that.

Wyatt however looked back and said: “Keep it, so we’ll remember her.”

Darren nodded to Sandy and she felt his shoulders shake as he did so. The others nodded in agreement and Sandy felt relieved, if just a tiny bit compared to before.

They continued to the main dome of the prestigious project that Daedalus Dominion once was. Ernie started recalling all the experiments he’d read about that they’d tried to do here: Robotic Little Sisters, Spliced Hunters, gene recombination with non-humanoid species, the Alphas, Rocket turrets and more top secret experiments that he was never given clearance for. Seeing as they were about to crack that shell, that give him all the clearance he’d wished he’d never received. Then again, none of the people in the district survived and they would only find bodies in varying degrees of decay, depending on if they had been lying in one of the many water streams that flowed like icy treacherous rivers throughout the district. They arrived at the center, the dome inside the dome with massive reinforced steel bearings holding back the weight of the ocean or perhaps the world. Like Atlas. Yet, water had been leaking for years now and clinging to the metal had streamed down and formed a giant basin several stories high. The stainless steel remained without stains from rusting, but Ernie shuddered when he saw a red mark way above him on the ceiling.

“Welcome to hell’s secluded island, people,” Wyatt said.


Goodbye and farewell, hope you are in a better place, Adelaide.
From the survivors…

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Yeah, little slip, sorry about that. Oh by the way, see any spelling errors, be sure to let me know, hate to have it ruin the story


Chapter XXXII: A darker heritage

“We’ll set up shop here?” Wyatt asked gesturing to no particular spot.

“Yeah sure, it’s been a long day, we all have to catch some sleep…” Sandy said before she yawned once or twice. One and a half sorta.

Some of the others joined in. They didn’t look particularly well, even when you counted the fact they were exhausted and had all kinds of gruesome things on their clothes, hands and face that they didn’t want to know where it came from. They stood at the edge of what had once been a tank storing something before the dome started filling up with ice cold seawater through the cracks in the ceiling. Some bent over to wash all of their parts that looked black or dark red and checked for wounds. At least it seemed, they had made it out of Talos Trappings in one piece. That was certainly something.

“Come,” Sandy said to Darren and pulled his arm to the edge of the water to rinse his face and arms.

Darren shivered even before Sandy put her palms filled with cold water to his arms and Sandy smiled as Darren suddenly wasn’t as tough as he pretended to be as Sandy made him feel like that young little boy that stared at the ‘fishies’ in outside of the ‘bowl’ as he called Rapture. A giant fishbowl with the fishes on the outside and air on the inside. At least in here it seemed, things started to revert back to their original purpose: a cold dark ocean that pierced through every barrier.

“No wounds at all, you’re in perfect health, what do you say about that?” Sandy said with a smile.

“Go into the deep, brother…” it sounded.

It was like it was coming from the water itself and it was calling out to all those who managed to survive the hubris of Rapture, its overzealous pride.

Darren jumped back and said to Sandy: “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Sandy asked.

Darren turned and the others and Wyatt looked up as well as Darren said: “Did anyone hear that? Tell me somebody heard it.”

“Look Darren, if even you are going insane, I’m waking up because that’s a nightmare that even Rapture can’t manage to create,” Claire said out of the blue.

She hadn’t been talking since… a while now that Darren thought about it. She’d never spoken to him directly, so why now… Now that Addie was dead.

“I’m not going insane, erm Claire, I know I heard something,” Darren said.

“Well, do you know who was talking to you?” Buck said.

“No… I think it hit me heavier than I thought it would, she, I… I’m going to bed,” Darren said as he tossed his bag with the Little Sister Lilly in it over his shoulder rather rudely. He knew she wouldn’t mind.

The few lights shone an eerie light on the once great Daedalus central dome. The lights ran on an experimental process developed by scientists to run separately from the geothermal power Hephaestus powered the rest of Rapture with. Another way they had tried to make their own might until the very end that their progress ended abruptly and took them with it. Way over on the other side of the basin Darren spotted part of the Icarus tower that had tumbled down to rest against the dome. Its long, pointy end seemed like it could pop their balloon of safety any second now. Claire of all people had been right: it would be a nightmare if he went insane. He shouldn’t let these strange thoughts triumph over his will.

Sandy went to lie besides him and Darren moved Lily, having fallen asleep in her ‘sleeping bag’ with few holes, out of the small covered sleeping spot he’d made so Sandy had room to lie in his arms. She turned around to meet Darren’s eyes and felt his arm holding her stronger and pulling her closer. They kissed like every time was the last time and they knew they didn’t have time to wait for anything.


“Mr. Bubbles, Mr. Bubbles, are you there? Are you there? Come and give me lollies, come and bring me toffees. Teddy bears... teddy bears,” the Little Sister called Lilly mused in her sleep.

It was more of an ADAM processing cycle than truly sleeping, but she still acted like she was a perfectly human girl about eleven years of age, singing a song from her childhood, but disturbed. Perfectly normal for most people, apart from her being obsessive, compulsive and she drank human blood.

Whatever Wyatt tried to think of the sister as someone who helped them and thus needed to be treated with love, he couldn’t bring himself to do so. He wasn’t as compassionate and Darren, well… He’d do anything for Sandy and more. Wyatt had to erase all of the things he didn’t want to remember from his mind and then everything would be fine. But in the meantime he couldn’t bring his eyes to blink, let alone rest for a few borrowed minutes of sleep.

“Can’t sleep either huh?” Sally said as she went to sit next to Wyatt on the bearing that served as a bench for the restless.

“No, no I’m afraid not. I’ll keep guard anyway, at least I’ll do something useful. But you should go sleep, you look tired,” Wyatt said, though he didn’t quite look at Sally long enough to make such an assessment.

“You look tired too,” Sally said with a laugh before she turned to him again and said: “I can’t stop thinking about it either, no matter how hard I try.”

“Well, I’m not sure if…” Wyatt said as he flashed by all the things he’d been thinking about in his mind and found the thing that Sally knew about and thought about. Not that very important thing, not Darren and Sandy, not Daedalus Dominion, but Addie. “I, I don’t show it, but I miss her too.”

“Yeah, me too… But that wasn’t what I was thinking about,” Sally said as she turned to face Wyatt if he turned himself as well.

He did so briefly and saw Sally’s eyes light up for a moment before he looked away again. His cheeks reddened as he forgot all the misery and atrocities they had witnessed or caused.

“Why-why… You don’t like it when people call you that, do you?” Sally said.

“Not really, it reminds me of… what I should’ve given up a long time ago,” Wyatt said.

“Perhaps it’s time now to do so,” Sally said and moved half of an inch closer to Wyatt so her skirt touched his belt and their hips got locked into place.

“Perhaps… but, I’m afraid to say it, but… aren’t you mad at me? For ignoring you and following her all the time? Aren’t I just taking advantage of you because I can no longer have what I’ve been obsessing about all these years?” Wyatt said.

He was still afraid to face Sally, especially now that she was so eerily close to him, but he was more afraid he’d hurt her crushingly with no chance at repair if he moved right now.

“I don’t think I have time to worry about those things, not anymore. All I know is I want happiness and I’ll have only one shot at it. I don’t want nobody else but you, Wyatt,” Sally said as Wyatt still couldn’t face her and looked down to her crossbow.

Was there even a point in surviving if he didn’t have Sandy? Why did he want Sandy if he’d always dreamed of becoming the greatest engineer, greater than Ryan, greater than anyone? He’d gone to work with McClendon Robotics so he could learn from the master himself, who’d even made functioning Little Sisters with slugs producing ADAM flawlessly, but went bankrupt because of the Big Daddies leaving them alone and not caring for machines. Not like McClendon cared, not like Wyatt did.

Maybe he didn’t need to manically love someone to keep going, maybe he could prove his worth on his own and help the others survive this hellhole of a hellhole of a city. But that didn’t mean he should forget why they were surviving in the first place.

“I can’t promise you anything and I don’t want love just to have love, but I do want to make you happy because if you’re happy, I’m happy and that’s a rare thing,” Wyatt said as he stood up and looked Sally in the eyes. Her shiny, naïve, innocent eyes that were a pale shade of blue. Her wide-eyed gaze made everyone notice she had blue eyes the moment she walked into a room, but only now Wyatt could see there were also brown spots in her eyes, as if they’d been sown in there like the freckles on her cheeks.

Sally stood up as well and gazed back with those tantalizing eyes. She thought he’d just walk away like he always did, but he didn’t. Softly he pressed his lips against hers… then he walked away.

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Chapter XXXIII: Signs about things to come, secrets from long ago

“I know why it has to be children, but why just girls? This I cannot determine why, but I know it is so. Fontaine says 'ah, one less bathroom to build in the orphanage'. It is amazing to watch the effect of ADAM on their small bodies. Their own cells, replaced by the new stems the instant they are damaged. These children are practically invulnerable. It is a shame you could not do the same thing to an adult. There would be quite a market for a man you could not kill.” Brigid Tenenbaum, creator of the Little Sisters

“I’m going on guard duty,” Wyatt said and turned to Sally.

She however was still all frozen up after Wyatt had unexpectedly kissed her. Before he had turned around again however, she followed him a few meters behind, but persistent. Baby steps Sally, baby steps, she thought to herself.

So they quietly walked around before leaving the dome to spy around the corridors for anything they could have a use for. The district had been abandoned long ago, so much of it was in disrepair and dead as a graveyard, encased in a metal casket. On some walls, bicycles and broken turrets there was more rust than usable metal and however great and destructive ADAM and the means to filter and treat it, it didn’t last long being left alone to die. A horrid smell wafted from the sea slug breeding grounds and the sea water pipe had clogged up, leaving the slugs to rot. Neither ADAM or Little Sisters would come from this place ever again. Sally was quite the sweet girl who got startled by the slightest negative or dangerous looking thing and abhorred her having to kill other former human beings to survive possibly even more than Sandy did and ten times more than Adelaide ever did, so you’d expect her to shiver and scream at all the dead, decay and filth they came across.

Now however she filled herself with all the happy feelings she ever felt, because of her friends and because of Wyatt and started to skip along the floor as they went through the dark corridors. She must look quite disturbed to other sane people, though Wyatt was no longer sane so he wouldn’t know. Her childlike way of walking she had readopted however reminded one of them and then the other of the Little Sisters as they looked for ADAM in corpses. Sally acted a little bit like Little Sisters and that made one of both look more like the other than Wyatt had thought they were like.

“So how long do you think we have to wait for Ryan to forget about us and stop the pheromones? If we can’t find a total antidote to his poison, that is,” Sally asked.

“I don’t quite know, you should ask Ernie and Buck about that,” Wyatt said. “But we can’t stay here forever. If Ryan can’t get to us, something else will.”

“Maybe we could look for help… Sandy and Darren’s parents! We were supposed to find them, but we didn’t. Does that mean they might’ve…” Sally said.

“No, I think they’re still alive but they fled before we could find them. Maybe Sandy can lead us to them or if we’re strong enough we can barge through the barricades near the welcoming center and take the bathysphere back up. Or we kill Ryan,” Wyatt said without the slightest remorse.

“I don’t think we have a choice. Charlie would do anything to do that more than escaping. But what happened to Atlas, Sofia Lamb, Brigid Tenenbaum? They didn’t take ADAM for all I know and they would love to bring down Ryan,” Sally said.

She kicked a rock over and saw the entrails of a cat without the cat lying under it. She gagged as Wyatt said:

“Atlas lost his spliced up army and went into hiding for all I know. Ryan made Lamb disappear and Tenenbaum… didn’t she go insane and run around killing Little Sisters? Anyway, Ryan has done everything to regain his iron grip on this city and we are his prisoners now.”

“Why did they use Little Sisters in the first place to make ADAM? Look what such a despicable act has done to us all. If I had ever been kidnapped to be made into a Little Sister, my parents couldn’t have saved me…” Sally said as she bowed her head and held her arms around her hollow shell of a body, which she could count every rib of now.

She’d lost some weight all right, she wasn’t pudgy in one little place anymore, but she didn’t feel pretty at all being so hungry and frail. She felt like a skeleton waiting to collapse on itself.

“Hold on, do you hear that?” Wyatt said as he sharpened his attention and turned his ears to the corridor up ahead. It couldn’t be one of them, it sounded too… old for that. And eerily familiar.

“Hear what?” Sally said out loud as she’d quickly returned to her cheery demeanor.

“Sush, be quiet, there’s something there that is calling us…” Wyatt said as he let his hand crackle with blue arcs of electricity.

Whatever it was, Wyatt wouldn’t let it sneak up on him just like that.

“Or maybe it’s calling for you,” Sally said.

Wyatt couldn’t resist the call any longer, he must be going insane but who cares he thought as he rounded the corner and found… nothing. Another basin of water, being as eerily quiet and ice cold as ever.

“Wyatt, Claire might say we can’t have Darren go insane but that goes twice for you, please,” Sally said as she glanced around the place looking for a voice she hadn’t even heard in the first place.

“Okay okay, we‘ll go back to the others and think of something,” Wyatt said as he offered his arm to Sally.

The blue-eyed girl felt like a young school girl again as she gladly accepted Wyatt’s arm and told herself she wasn’t going to lose Wyatt. Not now, not ever.

Without warning Wyatt fell forward onto the floor hitting it hard with his nose and chin and pulled along Sally with him. In an instant Wyatt was yanked back to where they had come from and Sally held onto him while trying to find something to hang onto and get him off whatever grabbed in. She tried to look back but that loosened her grip on Wyatt and she quickly took her crossbow to fire right over his shoulder to the slimy threat as they were nearing the water. The thing screamed horribly as Sally’s arrow hit its target and let loose of Wyatt before diving into the water.

Wyatt quickly rolled over, stood up and asked: “Where did it go?”

“There, the basin!” Sally yelled.

Wyatt charged his wrist and forearm to an incredible power and voltage before releasing a hurling bolt of lightning into the water and electrocuting everything in it. As he heard the beast screaming as it took in water just below the surface, he tried to catch his breath. That was the last and worst day of that ugly thing. It must’ve come from the ocean, which meant there were more things swimming around in the basins that had formed in Daedalus Dominion. They had to warn the others. A lot of dead fish were surfacing because of the horrific current that had tortured their bodies through the water. It would certainly lure more dwellers that had been lurking on the bottom of the basin. Maybe there were even connections between the several pits filled with water that they couldn’t see. And perhaps they could reach farther with whatever that beastly thing undocumented by mankind yanked Wyatt and by extension Sally to the floor.

After running at the top of their lungs they arrived at the temporary camp the others had set up.

“Everyone pack up, there are things in the water that just tried to kill me,” Wyatt yelled.

Most people in the group had just managed to fall asleep and were quite moody at being woken up to say the least. Most of them weren’t even near being well rested and couldn’t move a finger let alone throw back a sarcastic comment. Unsurprisingly the one that finally answered didn’t do anything all day anyway and almost seemed like she didn’t use tons of make-up to appear glamorous and high class.

“Darren’s thing that whispered to him? Wyatt, go insane if you will, I don’t care,” Claire said.

“Shut it Claire, or I’ll electrocute you before Eddie wakes up, we have to move, now!” Wyatt said.

Sally helped up Sandy and Darren who had snuggled together and even they sounded a bit ungrateful and unbelieving about them being in danger, but eventually they pulled themselves together, picked up their stuff and the bag with Lily sleeping in it like a not so horribly genetically altered baby girl and started directing to the others to a safer place to spend the night.

“Sally, whatever happens…” Wyatt said. “Don’t ever give up and… don’t hate me.”

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Chapter XXXIV: A shining example

“Where do we go,” Charlie asked.

“Anywhere there is no water!” Wyatt said before looking up to the dome leaking in the water of the entire ocean. “Okay, anyone got any thoughts?”

“The labs, they must’ve secured ‘em somehow!” Ernie said.

The group started running after Ernie and Buck who both had a faint idea, one through experience and one through instinct, where the laboratories would have been built so they wouldn’t be affected by temporary leaks. Safe to say, they wouldn’t be secured for permanent gushing and spouting leaks of freezing ocean water, but it was their best bet to escape whatever horrific ocean dwelling beasts were looking for human meat snacks like Wyatt.

“They would have to sit high and dry in order to keep working and also… aha!” Ernie said.

He ran to a door at the edge of the dome that was quite close to the hallways Wyatt and Sally had been exploring. All by himself, he suddenly wrecked it open and went up the stairs hidden in the dark hallway. Wyatt and Sally looked back anxiously at the water basin where they had been attacked, went through the door and closed it behind them.

Climbing the stairs seemed to take hours as it went quite steep in unexpected parts and every three steps you could hear someone shout as they mistook their step in the dark. People like Darren, Sandy, Wyatt and Sally held up their arm as it crackled with electricity and glowed a tiny bit, but it didn’t help them see much better.

“Eh guys, let me go in front,” Charlie said.

“Huh? Why?” Sandy said.

Without saying a word Charlie passed by the others and then activated his only plasmid. Every visible part of Charlie started to shine with a golden color before he lit up like a bright candle in the darkness. The light that shone from his skin and eyes blinded people as they stumbled against the wall of the staircase. As Wyatt was the first to recuperate from the colored flashes that appeared every time someone closed their eyes or opened them, he said: “Wait, this is that plasmid they scanned back at Talos Trappings, isn’t it? Bright Bulb? It was meant for attention seekers, but it was a useless thing lying in between the other plasmids we stole from Ryan.”

“Yeah, I thought if nobody took it, I might as well do so,” Charlie said. “Comes in quite handy now, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah yeah, just move a bit up ahead and dim yourself a bit, it’s like your ego suddenly grew as big as the sun,” Wyatt said as he kept his hand in front of his face just to be sure.

“Got it,” Charlie said.

With the path up ahead hurting their eyes now because of Charlie, the others glanced aside to the wall they were leaning against as they made their way up. Great works of art had been recreated to adorn the formerly pristine walls, though now that seemed like a pointless effort as the paint had become distorted because of the many streams of water running down its canvas. This was one of the proudest districts in all of Rapture, making more progress with their labs and testing grounds than even Point Prometheus, before it took over fallen Daedalus Dominion’s role. Point Prometheus had even been a museum about the splendors of the ocean before it was hastily converted to Big Daddy training grounds. And now this was place was like a dead man walking behind a dying man. If Rapture was swallowed by the sea, Daedalus Dominion would be right there to follow after it.

Finally, they came up after Charlie and saw the light coming in from the right. Sandy and Sally rushed ahead through the open doors that were letting through the light and went onto the large balcony that hung over the gap and water basins below them, which seemed to be former homes and work places, which doubled as testing environments for the more dangerous experiments and what they could do in a ‘normal’ Rapture district. All in the name of progress for the sake of progress.

Charlie ‘dimmed’ himself as he was also running out of EVE. The whole group stood on the balcony as they could see the whole metal inner dome and even a glimpse of the ocean dome through a particularly big crack in the not so indestructible shell of Daedalus Dominion. They could see their improvised sleeping places as well as the way to the entrance where they had come through not so long ago. Where they had come through, without Adelaide.

“I wish she could see this,” Sally said.

“Me too,” Darren said.

“Guys, the labs?” Ernie said.

“Do they have any food there?” Charlie said.

“I doubt it,” Wyatt said.

“Well in that case I’ll stay right here,” Charlie said as he sat down on the ground and jabbed himself with an EVE hypo.

Sally, Claire and Sandy also stayed behind and looked on as Charlie yelped as the blue fluid coursed through his veins and refilled his strength. You could see his blood throbbing with the stuff as they started to accept the EVE instead of blood as his lifeline. They all had been feeling it: without a constant supply of ADAM, they were starting to weaken and change as their bodies craved the stuff and demanded it be fed it. But they didn’t have any left.

“We’ll have to use Lily to find us some ADAM, soon. But could there still be any left in a place where the bodies are so rotten?” Sandy said to Sally.

“We’re all rotten inside,” Claire said.

She seemed to be talking about herself.

Meanwhile, Darren, Ernie, Buck, Eddie and Wyatt had stumbled upon a supply closet which had a ton of security on it and a heavy lock to boot, but through a combined hacking and ruthlessly powerful effort, they got it open and found intriguing chemicals inside.

“Hey, we could make something out of this. There isn’t any ADAM too, it can’t exist out of a living body for this long. Unless we can find some sea slug farms. They had to have a small supply ready in case the vent system broke. Maybe because of a collision with a whale or something else and the Little Sisters crawling through it with some ADAM were to be washed away into the ocean,” Ernie said.

“Long story short Ernie?” Wyatt said.

“This could work,” Ernie said.

“Help help, somebody help!” somebody yelled.

It was Claire. Eddie dropped whatever he was holding with Ernie just narrowly catching it before the other young mean went after Eddie and a very distraught sounding Claire.

“What is it?” Eddie said as he saw Claire looking around for a way to go and find Eddie and the others.

“They’re attacking the others, I, I didn’t know what else to do,” Claire said.

She held her hands in front of her, hopelessly feeling so weak and helpless.

“Don’t worry, we’ll go. Where are they, still on the balcony?” Eddie asked.

Claire nodded before they all ran as fast as they could and charged their plasmids. As they rounded the corner, they saw Charlie swinging his bat as hard as he could against a green-skinned splicer with glowing yellow eyes. There were dozens of them swarming around Sandy and Sally.

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Chapter XXXV: The green-eyed monster

The creature hardly looked human anymore what with its webbed feet, distorted face and complementary expression and it clawing at Sandy as she tried to burn off it and its many fellow abominations.

Sally wasn’t good at close combat. The crossbow she had tried to fire lay a few meters further, near the edge of the balcony. Charlie swung his way towards the girls, but Sally had just enough strength to push him back towards the others to save him from their regrettable fate. These things didn’t fear bullets, they had several dug into their chest and back as they still kept on attacking relentlessly scratching and clawing until they’d draw blood. And then…

“Everyone make room, I’m gonna blast them right off the balcony!” Ernie said as he carelessly tossed Wyatt aside.

“Wait, you’ll take Sandy and Sally out with them, they won’t survive the fall!” Darren yelled.

“Tell them to hold on, I’m already charging!” Ernie said as he held up his hand.

“Sandy, Sally, grab onto something, now!” Buck said.

Sally nodded at him as Wyatt saw her face having gone from being overjoyed with childlike an innocent love to being contorted with fear and sadness as she was close to losing all the things mentioned before. But she wasn’t about to give up yet. She jabbed an EVE hypo into her forearm as Sandy blasted one of the green, yellow-eyed freaks with ice-cold death before Sally could get a hold off a pipe that hang by a thread from the wall. It flew into her hand before she launched it into the ground and grabbed Sandy’s hand.

“Do it!” Sally said.

As if it was Ernie’s own roar, the sonic boom flew over the balcony with a deafening sound hitting all those that were in range and threw the monstrous green splicers over the railing of the balcony, plunging them into the abyss below. Fish food for the bigger predators of the deep ocean. They were safe, for now.

“Those… those were fricking humans for ****’s sake,” Charlie said as he dropped his bat and fell on his behind.

“Those weren’t humans, not even splicers,” Eddie said as he had arrived with Claire.

“Oh yeah, so how come they walked like people, looked like people and even frickin’ yelled like people? We’ve all turned into animals since that war started anyway,” Charlie said.

“What… were they doing down here?” Sandy said as Sally helped her up.

As Sally pulled the pipe back out of the ground, tossed a glance aside to the balcony and cursed behind her mouth, Wyatt said: “There might be worse things down here than those green things or the thing that attacked Sally and me. Our schedule just got changed. We need a cure for Ryan’s pheromones now, before they wreck the bathysphere and our only way back.”

“And us,” Darren said.

“Well, we don’t have a cure now, but we’ll see what we can do,” Ernie said.

“Okay, we’ll do everything to protect you,” Darren said as he held up his electrified arm.

“Me too,” Sandy said proudly.

The loud bang came out of nowhere as everyone ducked for cover. Then, again another loud bang as if metal clenched into metal and cracked its knuckle for the fight to come. A third one. What the hell was happening?

“Hold on a second,” Wyatt said as he held up his fingers.

Another loud bang. And another one.

“That’s five…” Buck said.

Seven more followed as the others saw nothing moving at all. It sounded a lot more distant and yet way too loud to not be seeable by now. Was it a giant bronze man ready to crush their little party? No…

“It’s… New year, that’s the new year clock sounding off midnight. What else would be so loud and obnoxious that people would have still allowed it? Only if it was… once a year,” Wyatt said.

“It’s been a whole year already?” Darren said with slight disbelief.

“It’s… 1960,” Sandy said.

Couples shuffled together and shared a brief kiss as was customary and they remembered how much they loved that other person, how happy they were. Claire pulled Eddie towards her and kissed him before she sneered: “And could we get to keeping ourselves alive right now, like immediately? Laurel and Hardy, get on with it!”

“Better hurry before she starts cracking Chaplin jokes,” Charlie muttered as he offered his help with the pheromone antidote.

“Since when does that girl even make jokes?” Ernie asked.

“Beats me,” Buck said.

“Now!” Claire yelled as she held onto Eddie’s arm, whose owner was still quite dazed at what had just happened.

“I suggest you don’t attract any more attention,” Wyatt said, “though you did good. We survived. Get Lily to them, will you?”

Darren handed Claire the bag at Wyatt’s gesturing and Claire widened her eyes as she tried to persuade him otherwise, but Wyatt didn’t even blink. He kept staring at her until she accepted the Little Sister bag and put the straps over her shoulders.

“God, how much does this way?” Claire said before she trotted along to the labs, muttering and complaining as she went. Eddie watched as she did

“Okay, we need to make a plan, protect this place at all costs. I say this is what we do…” Wyatt said to the ones that were left. It was basically the inner circle minus… Adelaide; Sally stood as close as possible to Wyatt and Sandy and Darren stood as close as possible to one another. Eddie didn’t know what to do except listen. Seeing as he was the big bruiser that kinda didn’t screw up all the time. They would need him. Claire would need him.


And now Claire was carrying that filthy little monster on our back so it could do whatever disgusting thing Laurel and Hardy had a use for for her. And that traitor Charlie… Come to think of it, she was also kind of a traitor. At least to these people. All she had cared about up till now was survival. Nothing else. She thought she’d been safe in Talos Trappings but she had been wrong like everybody else. Chances are she was going to die here. Chances are that when Eddie finally snapped and realized she had been manipulating him to survive and nothing more, she wouldn’t make it anymore as everything and everyone would become her mortal enemy and they would give their life to kill her, the one that loathes them, everyone and everything, including herself.

She felt the weight of Lily pushing down on her knees and feet. Probably drank every single baby bottle filled with intestinal ADAM she could fill before they got gassed and now she was useless, what with these green-eyed monsters probably eating one another and leaving no bodies. What if she… took this creepy monstrosity’s ADAM and used it for herself, to get out of here? She thought for two seconds and realized there had to be Gatherer’s Gardens around here somewhere and Ryan wouldn’t have planned that much ahead before the fall of Daedalus Dominion, so she wouldn’t be controlled by the pheromones. What if she choked the life out of something that shouldn’t even exist, an abomination… like her. The last sane woman in Rapture and she was the biggest monster on the inside, underneath her pristine white skin and deep inside her deflowered and contorted body that lost all her elegance…

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Chapter XXXVI: Listen to Iron Maiden, baby

She… she couldn’t kill the Little Sister. Not because it wasn’t the right thing to do, but because she was too scared to do anything she felt like doing. Did Claire even care if what she did was right for anyone but her?


It would be long from now, that this young child would have a twisted future. She only vaguely remembered what had brought her here, at the age of sixteen, looking through the porthole of a strange diver’s helmet. She was long and gangly and almost as tall as her former protector. Who was her daddy or her big brother she sometimes remembered? Where were they now? The only thing that seemed to matter now for Lily was screaming at anything touching a Little Sister, a title she no longer bore. Perhaps she was dreaming all of this, her in shining armor with a long sharp needle read to suck the life out of everyone that reminded her this nightmare of a crumbling city was all too real. Sometimes Lily had visions of this future and sometimes she dreamt she was lying dead in the water, slowly melting away into a cold pool dripping from the ceiling. And then she crawled back onto her feet, climbed the tallest structures and looked on at the lights of the cursed city of Rapture.

And then the little girl fell back into her brainwashed thoughts, about lollipops and daddies and brothers in shining armor, guarding her from any dumb monsters waiting to be ‘unzipped’ while she watched over the sleeping angels dressed in elegant suits or dresses. Red veils hung over her head and red ‘flower petals’ flowed from the wings of the angels. Only a little girl with yellow instead of blind eyes could see the world in such a light.

What would the fate of this little girl be? What would the fate of all of them be?

Claire stepped along, muttering rich spoiled girl’s comments as if she wanted to prove she was a living stereotype.

“We have to hurry, we can’t stay here for weeks on end, there isn’t any food left, not for a long time has anything grown here, not by itself, not on the bottom of the ocean,” Ernie said as he rummaged through all the supplies they had gathered.

“Then let’s get on it,” Charlie said without giving it much thought.

“You don’t understand, it’s not that simple. Ryan wouldn’t be so foolish to let us, the ragtag rogues that have caused him so much trouble and cost him so much money, make a simple antidote to his pheromone that just won him the war. I don’t think there’s enough time. If only… we could find a temporary solution, find a way so the pheromone can’t affect us. That way, we can surprise Ryan, disable the ventilation system or filter it somehow…” Ernie said.

The more he rambled on, the less anyone could understand as in what he was actually talking about. The situation wasn’t hopeless, it was impossible. Even if Ryan didn’t wreck the bathysphere line and pushed the fallen district into the sea, it would take weeks for them counter the pheromone responsive agent in the ADAM of their plasmids and gene tonics so the gas wouldn’t affect them. Even worse, Ryan would instantly dispatch hypnotized splicers to finish them off when they vented away the gas in their first encounter. Ryan hadn’t been that sportive in the least. And they had lost Adelaide. Someone in the group knew they were next or maybe they all thought they were next.

“Ernie, can you make it?” Charlie asked.

“No…” Ernie said. “But Buck can. I found a stash… of Brain boosts.”

“You could take ‘em,” Buck said. “You know everything there is to know about chemistry.”

“But you can make your brain to intuitively find a way. Years of research should have started, well, years ago. You can do it,” Ernie said.

He picked up a few bottles from the desk. By themselves they were useless. A strong arm was drawn on every etiquette. He showed it to Charlie and Buck before he said: “A stronger arm. A sharper brain.”

Then he downed the first bottle before anyone could stop him. And then more of them. He clenched his fists as his mass grew and grew. His bones hardened as his muscles tightened to support them and vice versa. He grew twice Buck’s size and three times his own before he said: “And some Armored shelley, yep… oops, gotta watch that, gotta think first before I say something. So… Your turn Bucky.”

Claire had watched the transformation. She was horrified and yet… She recognized something in Ernie’s eyes. They had grown more dull, less fretting about details and yet as honest as ever, always trying to do his best. It was the look in Eddie’s eyes. The look of someone wanting to protect something. Someone. Everyone.

“Here’s the little rut,” Claire said as she turned around. “Take good care of her.”

As soon as Claire had left, Charlie muttered something about Claire being as ‘charming’ as ever.

“Hold on a second,” Charlie said. “Take good care? Of ‘her’, not it? Was that really Claire?”

“Whether it’s a shape shifter or not, we can shoot her in the head regardless, right?” Ernie asked.

Buck looked at the bottles of Brain Boost in front of him. This time he couldn’t mistake them for strength boosting tonics. It was now or never. They could still get out of this alive.


A long winded roar echoed through the falling district of Daedalus Dominion. Everybody recognized it: it was the song of a whale as it passed through Rapture, looking for a mate. But yet, it sounded just a bit different.

“Hold on a second,” Wyatt said. “That almost sounds like… a female.”

Darren looked up from his tender embrace with Sandy right at his side and his arm around his waist and said with an almost naïve frown: “Really now Wyatt, you have a beautiful woman like Sally at your side and you’re going to talk about a female whale you recognize? That’s just a little bit weird.”

Then Wyatt froze as the sound seemed to come from below them. Whatever shoddy way this district was built, Wyatt was sure it was built on solid rock and no whale could pass through there. He leaned over the railing as he pulled himself away from Sally.

“What’s wrong, Wy… Wy…” Darren said as he froze as well.

“It’s the female whale Darren… Mother…” Wyatt said as he kept looking down.

Darren leaned over the railing. Sandy first whispered a few times, then yelled as Darren wouldn’t answer her.

“What is happening Wyatt, talk to me!” Sally exclaimed as she shivered.

Before they could look over the railing as well, it happened in less than a second. It was too late to hold on, it was the last thing anyone had expected including Wyatt and Darren. They fell and fell and fell… Untill they smashed into the ground and a big pool of blood spread out from under them.

Sandy yelled in disbelief. No, no this was a nightmare Rapture couldn’t make, that only her mind feared and so created to keep her awake and alert. She threw all her cyclone traps unto the floor below and jumped with Sally following shortly after.

The winds engulfed both of them as they plummeted towards the mini tornados and felt their speed lessening. The strength of her traps was so great that they came to a standstill a meter from the ground before they were thrown upwards again and landed in an arc a few meters further. The landing was hard and painful, but they almost shook off their bruises like it was nothing and rushed to Darren and Wyatt’s sides.

It couldn’t be, they couldn’t be dead. Why did this happen, why did they fall? What drew them towards… And then they saw the metal monstrosity rising from the water. It had found them.

Warning: Possible hiatus incoming. Could post another chapter next week and the week after but the break will last untill mid February

[Scriptor Scorpio]

I'm back and intending to finish this and Pokémen and then continuing some projects, hopefully. Without further ado...


Chapter XXXVII: The spells of old, the past that sticks

It had risen from the water and the bronze giant towered above them with menacing yellow eyes that seemed like holes into their twisted minds. But it wasn’t a Big Daddy. It was something that was as least as dangerous, but also decidedly different. And Sandy couldn’t care one bit.

Darren wasn’t moving and neither was Wyatt. What could they do? A First Aid Kit, yes, Sandy thought as she searched herself and Darren for one. When she didn’t find one right away she started ripping away at satchels on Darren in an effort to tear something out of it that might not be there. She frantically moved with her hands and so she didn’t hear it the first time when Sally eventually shouted: “Take it, I found another, use it on him now!”

Sandy glanced aside, grabbed it and used it as her hands became covered in blood. He couldn’t be dead, he couldn’t be dead. As the bronze monstrosity roared, Wyatt moved and after that so did Darren.

“I… I survived?” Wyatt said as he coughed up blood before he looked to Sally’s distorted expression and smiled. She was with him and now she knew he was okay.

Now she knew…

“Darren,” Wyatt yelped as he scrambled to his feet and went on, “look away you two, please, you have to trust…”

Wyatt ran into the mechanical hand of the thing they had dropped towards and screamed as hard that bones seemed to split. Sandy looked to Darren who also tried to get away as his whole body began to shake.

“What’s happening, what did I give you!” Sandy yelled as she shuddered covering her mouth in utter silent horror.

“It’s okay, just look away, I’ll be fine in just a minute…” Darren said and he couldn’t have told a lie as bad as he just did.

He stood up on his leg started to heal at a staggering rate that no First Aid Kit could accomplish. He had never needed EVE hypo’s, Lily the Little Sister trusted him and almost nobody else, he’d never been hurt for long periods of time no matter how much danger he threw himself into to protect Sandy. And now his leg had healed in the shape of a disturbingly big fishing hook pointing out at all angles as it had healed too quickly before it could be set.

Darren and Wyatt had done this before it seemed as Sally and Sandy both looked on as they hammered on their own legs, ribs and more as they broke them again to grow back right this time. In under thirty seconds they could walk and breath normally again and every little cut they had closed and tidied up. On the outside the odd spindly red dried up blood remained. It was if ADAM wasn’t in their blood, it was their blood.

“What… are you?” Sandy said as she stumbled backwards.

Darren wanted to calm her, but she yelled: “Get away from me!”

She started charging up electricity before Sally said: “Sandy, stop!”

Sandy looked up at the bronze giant which she hadn’t minded at all as her times with Darren flashed in front of her eyes as she had believe him to be dead. She could see it more clearly now. It was even leaner than the Alpha Big Daddies and its torso and head was more sculpted to look like the Venus of Milo or the Mona Lisa as the giant had been painted to have a soothing face rather than the growling steel underbelly of a whale protecting the Little Sisters. It did have large menacing metal hands, but it didn’t seem to carry any weapons. Come to think of it, while she was panicking and then looking on in horror as Darren snapped his own legs back in the right position after they had warped in all directions and ‘healed’ in all those twists, the giant hadn’t attacked them, had held Wyatt as he stumbled back in all his pain and confusion and pretty much stood there, watching with those yellow eyes, that now started to darken into a red shade, looking at Sandy as target waiting to strike first.

Sandy calmed down at last and the electricity disappeared from her hand as the giant calmed as well and took on its shade of yellow again.

“Can someone tell me what the hell is happening down there?” Eddie said from what was left of the balcony.

“This is the Protector of Daedalus Dominion,” Wyatt said as he leaned towards Sally, but she refused to be anywhere near him. Wyatt bowed his head as he continued: “It was cancelled because its Gatherers were cancelled. We were involved.”

“One day, Wyatt’s father came to Sandy’s father to ask for his help. Wyatt had been kidnapped by Fontaine’s men he said and he didn’t know what else to do. Eventually as it turned out Wyatt had been brought to the orphanage because with his mother having grown sicker and his dad losing his job, they could no longer take care of him. The orphanage had promised to look after him until his father could come back for him when he’d found a job, but it turned out to be a lie. I snuck into the orphanage without dad realizing while he was trying to negotiate with Fontaine and found Wyatt,” Darren said.

“They turned the both of us into Little Brothers, the slug implantation was a success and dad and I ‘went away for a while’ while dad was trying to figure out where I went. Eventually we escaped the control and the brainwashing and in the process showed that our Protector’s controlling system wasn’t effective. The bonding process only seemed to be enough for the Big Daddies and the Little Sisters, as the slug implantation caused us to be extremely violent and disobedient. Ironically, this Protector used pheromones in an effort to control us, the only Mona Momma ever made and locked away here,” Wyatt said. “And now Ryan is able to use a variant of those pheromones to control every normal splicer.”

“Except the two of you,” Ernie said as he jumped off the last step of the stairs they had went up to earlier today. “And now it has beckoned you to reforge the bond the lab workers engraved into your minds.”

The others, Eddie, Buck, Charlie and Claire had come down as well now.

“I… We couldn’t tell you that the slug was still inside us, that we weren’t human anymore and that we never would. Even now… The rage the slug induces in us as men is hard to control,” Darren said.

Sandy backed away even further and Darren lowered his head, giving her every reason to act like that towards him.

“Here in Daedalus Dominion, all the failed experiments lie, with the two of us with them,” Wyatt said. “We are the last Little Brothers. All the others died, the implementation process didn’t work or they went insane and had to be put down before any civilians were killed and Fontaine Futuristics was closed. Even in Rapture they don’t take brainwashing a child to go on a killing spree as the sweat of your brow.”

“But now you are…” Sandy said as she thought of how Lily had called Darren and by extension Wyatt. “Big Brothers.”

“Maybe now we will go insane despite our parents’ best efforts,” Wyatt said coldly.

The others kept their distance as the Mona Momma looked menacingly in their direction whenever they took as much as a breath.

“How did that thing, eh, she protect her Little Brothers?” Buck said as he didn’t see the Mona Momma hold any weapons.

“It turned out the pheromones were quite handy, but Fontaine couldn’t risk letting it use them on other people, as they could be robbed of their free will, cough cough, or worse, be turned against Ryan who would know what Fontaine was up to far too quickly with only one Mona Momma to use,” Wyatt said. “I’ve had a lot of time to understand our ‘mom’.”

He looked at the bronze giant which almost looked exactly like the art deco statues that adorned all of Rapture, with the divine form of both Venus and an all-soothing and protecting mother. The metal had been folded so she appeared to have long flowing hair painted gold and her face almost seemed human apart from the glowing eyes, comparable with Lily’s appearance. Nobody knew how she really looked as even now she was producing pheromones from the portholes on her sides and everyone seemed convinced she looked beautiful as an iron maiden. Her features could easily appear much more menacingly if anyone would come near its Little Brothers that had all grown up and so everyone remained frightened of the beautiful bronze giant that seemed close to a divine goddess towering above her worshippers.

Then Lily cried in her bag and the Mona Momma roared.

Any thoughts on what will come next?

[Scriptor Scorpio]

My apologies for the delay, I had a lot of work AND I wrote myself into a corner. Now, it being possible in the canon isn't necessary, but it forces me to build on the Rapture world in new and unexpected ways, while still keeping consistency... and working towards a Bioshockian ending. Enjoy


Chapter XXXVIII: Escaping the iron hand, part 1

“Please please please, don’t do it!” Darren said as he stood in front of the Mona Momma and spread his arms.

Even with the pheromones compelling him to obey the Mona Momma, he wasn’t about to let it kill everyone.

Sandy tried soothing Lily, but her being so close to the Little Sister angered the Mona Momma even more.

Wyatt started up his last turret bot and hung it on his arm to be able to carry its heavy caliber weapon without breaking off his arm, even if he was a former Little Brother.

“You won’t harm her,” Wyatt said and readied himself.

The Mona Momma hesitated one moment. Then it reached behind its back for a large clawed hammer and held it over its head.

“Sandy, get Lily to go over there to Darren,” Sally said.

“What?” Sandy said.

“Trust me, quickly!” Sally said.

Wyatt and Darren looked into the red portholes of the Mona Momma and stared right back. So this was the end. At least they wouldn’t succumb to some Oedipus complex like Freud had studied not so long ago.

Suddenly small arms clenched to Darren’s leg and he looked down.

“Please don’t fight Mom and Brother,” Lily said as she winced.

Could she still cry with tears flowing, Darren wondered. If she did, she was about to as the Mona Momma readied its swing. The Little Sister still had a heart, or something quite like it. And so did the Mona Momma.

It lowered its hammer and offered its hand to the Little Sister who connected with the strange pheromones. Its Big Daddy connection had been broken. Her connection, Wyatt corrected himself. Lily seemed to almost purr like a kitten as she moved her head as the large but articulate metal hand of the Mona Momma caressed her hair.

“What is this, are they friends now or something?” Charlie whispered.

Sandy and Sally both nodded and shook their head at the same time.

Women, Ernie thought. Though we men aren’t so different either…

“Momma?” Lily chirped.

The Mona Momma nodded and bowed as her red portholes or ‘eyes’ became a soothing green. From so closeby, Wyatt could read something carved into its chestplate. In edged letters made by a man most certainly, it said ‘Katherina’.

Darren turned to the others and said:

“You can breathe now.”

Some of them took this quite literally as they heaved in the damp air of Daedalus Dominion as if it were their last.

“It’s friendly now… as long as you don’t come to close to Lily, or us,” Wyatt said. “But now, we have to think about how to escape the iron hand.”

“I thought you just said it was friendly!” Claire said a bit too loud and quickly hid behind Eddie as the Mona Momma looked in her direction, still holding her hammer. It even seemed to click, it was like Adelaide had never died.

“I am talking about Ryan and his tyranny, it is time we end it. We devise something against his pheromones, go up to his office, break it open and break him in half. And now we have the army to do just that,” Wyatt said as he gestured to the Mona Momma.

“Ryan has an army, we have a fraction,” Claire said.

“You’re forgetting us,” Darren said. “More specifically, Wyatt and me.”

“How do you see th…” Claire said before Charlie interrupted her.

“Who cares, as long as we beat Ryan’s head to a bloody pulp!” Charlie said as he swung his bat with a permanent red crust on its end.

“I’m ready if you are,” Sally said and nodded to Wyatt.

“Me too,” Sandy said. That instantly got the rest aboard as well.

“This is a suicide mission,” Claire said. “Not even a mission really.”

“You’re welcome to stay here,” Wyatt said with a bit too wide smile.

A tremble shook everyone off their feet except the Mona Momma, Darren and Wyatt. As the other struggled to get up, Wyatt yelled: “We’ll gather up everything for the plan, you all get to the bathysphere, now!”

Wyatt and Darren ran off as Sandy and the others did as they said, with Lily following Sandy and the Mona Momma following after Lily, determined to save her from this wretched place. For some reason, with the lack of anything happening here, faint traces of her time as a normal mother sometimes resurfaced. She would protect this little girl as if, no, believing it to be her own.


“Anyone got Scout? You gotta deliver a message to them, so they take along the right vials for the antidote, anyone?” Ernie said.

“I got it,” Sally said. “What do you need me to tell them?”

As they ran, Ernie explained and as soon as Sally had memorized it, she went numb. Her body stayed behind as her mental form flew ahead. Ernie hadn’t thought this far through as they couldn’t wait for her to return to her body. He looked around and his suspicions seemed to be confirmed. Ryan was attempting to completely sever Daedalus Dominion from Rapture, the cliff, the bathysphere and them along with it. He had launched a barrage of missiles. They had to hurry. Ernie threw Sally over his shoulder and ran after the others.

They came to the bathysphere and everyone hurried to get inside. Buck hurriedly studied the air supply and other technical stuff by instinct and Ernie helped him as well when he had put down Sally next to Claire, who wasn’t too happy about having to hold her upright as Sally’s body leaned on her frail and spoiled shoulder.

Sandy stepped into the bathysphere and reached out for Lily as the Little Sister did the same, but the Mona Momma roared and grabbed Lily. She put her in a gap in her sides and the others quickly closed the bathysphere. Before Sandy could do anything, they were trying to disconnect the bathysphere. Darren. Wyatt. They were still behind as the Mona Momma loomed over their fragile shell that separated them from ice cold ocean water with the pressure of tons of concrete.

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Chapter XXXIX: Escaping the iron hand: part 2

Meanwhile Darren and Wyatt made their way back to the labs. They had to get the supplies before all of the district came falling down. Easier said than done as they had to constantly dodge debris as they made their way through the flooded inner dome. They had to go much faster, unlock all their ADAM regenerating capabilities even if their adult body couldn’t be healed fast enough to be quite as indestructible as a Little Sister or even a Big Daddy. And now their Mona Momma wasn’t around to protect them.

“How much stuff do you think we can carry?” Wyatt said as he gasped for air, but kept going.

“I don’t know, but we have to assume everything, because we’re going to need everyt…” Darren said as he jumped forward as he saw the water ripple.

Within an instant a disgusting green creature jumped out of the water covered in foam and lunged at Darren, narrowly missed and dived back into another basin.

“Was that… your sea creature?” Darren yelled after he’d gotten up and ran after Wyatt.

“I don’t think so, that was a man!” Wyatt said looking back for a moment. “I knew that thing from the balcony had buddies, but damn it, why.”

“Aaaaaaah… No mommy to protect the… ADAM…” a voice whispered just above water, but its head was nowhere to be seen.

“Aquatic splicers, great,” Wyatt said as he quickened his already superhuman pace.

In less adrenalin-fueled moments, he would guess that the isolated environment and experimental plasmid and gene tonics cocktails had caused trapped splicers to mutate and eventually adapt to aquatic life in the basins, which were under a lot less pressure than the water outside which had many stacks above it. But now wasn’t the time for pensive science, but destructive empiric methods. That’s what he called it in his mind, but what came out of his mouth was more in the line of: “Graaaaaah!”

He struck to his side as an aquatic splicer came to land and immediately received a branding as a greeting and screaming it fell back into the basin as the blue flashes of electricity disappeared into the dark deep waters.

Darren followed his example as he charged his arm while still running, breathing heavily then slit over the border between two basins, a former wall between two markets maybe, and dipped into the water unleashing the deadly power of a former Little Brother. Immediately ten more aquatic splicers jumped up from the other basins.

“Sh*t,” Darren said as he ran.

Wyatt had powered up the turret he had affixed to his arm and began firing upon the splicers in front of him to clear a path for the both of them. He looked back to see if he could help Darren and saw three splicers lunging for him.

“Darren!” he yelled.

‘Darren’ flashed as the three splicers dove through and they realized too late it was a decoy he had projected before from a short distance away Darren threw a hypnotize polyp and gained control of one of the splicers, who immediately jumped and turned on the others. Darren ordered it to ‘attack’ upon which it lunged with elongated jaws and dug its teeth into its former allies, ripping their slimy flesh apart. Disgusted Darren turned away and kept running. He hurriedly attached his ADAM procuring device to his wrist and without thinking, he stuck its tube in his arm. If his slug wouldn’t heal him fast enough, other people would. Anything so Sandy and the others would survive.

Finally, they had arrived at the stairs and they pushed themselves off of the wall and up to go even faster as the green monstrosities were catching up and Darren’s connection to his minion had broken up. The others had put their teeth in the minion no doubt. He had chills as he thought: no worries, I can get another one. These were once people, but hope was long lost for them even more than for the pheromone blasted remainder population of Rapture. He had to persist, there was no other way.

Wyatt got up to the top of the stairs and paused for a moment as he tossed a slight smile at Darren.

“What is it?” Darren said as he looked at the branded message in the wall.

A message from Sally with all the supplies Ernie wanted them to get. Well done Sally, even if I can’t see you, Wyatt thought.

“You got it? Then let’s go,” Darren said.

“Yeah yeah, remember the mission,” Wyatt mused as he followed after Darren. “I got an idea… go to the divers’ lockers and get as much stuff as possible. I’ll meet you there with the supplies.”

Darren shook his head, not quite getting what Wyatt had in mind but he gestured he heard it and went off to the lockers. A giant stream of water jetted out of the wall and knocked him off his feet. As he struggled to get up, he heard the cries of another pack of aquatic splicers. The water also brought him one of the pieces from a diver’s suit. Though a bit dinged, it could still work so he put the piece on his knee and darted back off towards the lockers, where the cries were coming from.

Wyatt loaded every bottle and sample in a bag and remembering his plan put some metal pots around it and burned them together with a few well aimed and concentrated electrobolts. That had to do it, the thought. He bent his knees a bit when he put the load on his back, but it was a good fit and he didn’t collapse right away, so that certainly was a good sign. He felt the adrenaline being added to through the ADAM he’d ingested from a few dirty vials and blinked as the slug refined it. Thanks… thing, he thought before running towards the hallway close to the labs and then towards the lockers. Grinding his teeth he also electro-welded a few flat pieces of metal to his upper arms and rounded the corner.

He watched as Darren struck the aquatic splicer right in the heart with his needle and pushed the piston until the splicer succumbed to its massive ADAM and blood loss and shriveled to its death before it was tossed aside and fell next to its two brethren who were already torn to shreds. Darren couldn’t help but smile as the ADAM gave him new strength, but looked down in something deeper than shame as he saw Wyatt and showed his comrade all the diver suits that had been left behind.

“What do you need?” Darren said.

“Everything,” Wyatt said.

The water had risen to above their knees and the diver suit parts were much easier to push forth in ‘schools’ of metallic fish of sorts. Looking at each other, Wyatt and Darren immediately started welding more parts to themselves. They had a feeling they were going to need these diving suits far more quicker than they could put them on in one piece while running for their life…

To be continued.

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Zero replies, 5k+ views... Although I am intending to finish this 100+ A4 pages story AND end it as skillfully and interesting as possible,
that sure puzzles me... Anyway, as per my usual manners, I apologize for the delay and I'm guessing by how I went over it for the length of that delay,
it was worth the wait. Enjoy.


Chapter XL: Escaping the iron hand: part 3

“You won’t leave this place alive…” a crackling voice whispered.

Darren and Wyatt looked up as the owner of the voice came around the corner with many of its foul brethren following. Bent over like a feral creature that had renounced its humanity long ago, they gazed at the former Little Brothers with a dripping hunger. A hunger for ADAM, or simply fresh flesh that wasn’t covered with slime or scales. They licked their sharp teeth as they eyed their prize. And the annoying armor they were putting on.

“Get them!” the aquatic splicer snarled.

The horde charged at the two friends and went down on all fours as they picked up speed, their yellow eyes popping as their veins swelled up from the pure ADAM.

Darren nodded at Wyatt who picked up another part of a boot, flash fused it to his shoe, gestured at the diver suits parts and launched them through the water with a great telekinetic force as the both of them charged at the splicers and each punched one squarely in the gut and before their first victim could recuperate and vomit from the sickening blow, both young men charged their fists with electricity and tossed them aside like rag dolls. Two kills, a dozen to go.

Some of the splicers jumped on the ceiling and latched on with their claws and slippery webbed feet and screamed at Darren and Wyatt as they approached them like mercilessly hunting spiders.

“I’ll handle them,” Wyatt said and held up his turret arm, pulled a lever while feeding it extra juice and mowed down the first two splicers that came just a bit too close. Wyatt bared his teeth at the other splicers as he charged his turret again before he unleashed a deadly rain of shocking bullets.

Darren moved up from behind him with a chest piece he’d hurriedly put on and threw a hypnotize polyp like a rotten tomato in the face of another splicer who yelped before he fell on his knees and the stench of the pheromones spread across his skin. He was a willing slave for as long as he was still alive… Then the pack leader gutted the slave like a fish and grinned at Darren. The latter grinned as well as he had held another polyp behind his back, widened his stance and threw the thing like a curve ball and the polyp exploded into a million pieces as the sickening green fog covered the pack leader as he let out his final curse with something reminiscent of a human voice. Then the pack jumped on him as he sprang out his claws and jabbed in all directions.

Let them kill themselves or each other so I don’t have to, Darren thought.

Wyatt only had the choice of letting his turret fire and eviscerate his enemies as he blocked an incoming flurry of deadly needles from an aquatic splicer that hung back. His ADAM slug would make sure he didn’t die right away, but…

“I don’t feel like being sleepy right now,” Wyatt said before he turned one of the needles around and flung it into the poisonous fiend’s neck, dropping it from the ceiling.

“We gotta go,” Darren said as he watched from a distance splicers running at a decoy of his before zapping them.

He stretched his arm which was now fully armored through fusing the segments separately to his skin. He would be a little less mobile, but it made him much more resilient. Wyatt looked at him and at himself as he struck to his side and punched a splicer’s teeth into its skull before he fused two shoulder pieces onto his arm and didn’t even flinch.

“Okay, the big one-two finale on three. One, two…” Wyatt said as he clung onto the wall and stuck his other unarmored hand into the water and unleashed the highest voltage he could bear himself without fainting.

Darren did the same from his end and the two of them trapped the remaining splicers in a quite literal death trap. For a few moments the water still arced with blue crackling lightning and then it was dead silent. Darren nodded at Wyatt, they released themselves from the corridor’s walls and sprinted through the water, Wyatt pulling along the last pieces of the diver suits as they rushed for the exit. They were approaching the balcony fast, but where they ended up if they kept running like this was of little concern compared to the rumbling that could be heard once again above their heads. What loomed above, were metal arches not bending, but slowly buckling under the damage that Ryan’s weapons did. The screeching sound was a rare one that few people ever lived through to tell the tale: the sound of metal structures brushing against each other as their connections had snapped apart. The place came crashing down, not in a matter of minutes, but seconds.

Without wasting any more words, Wyatt jumped off the balcony and dove head first into the water basin with Darren right behind him as the inner dome came crashing down. Wyatt had never thought about it before, but seeing as how Daedalus Dominion had crumbled a bit before when Icarus Tower collapsed, it was only fitting it now fell down in its entirety. But would they be trapped in a deadly labyrinth?


“Get back, get back now!” Sandy yelled.

The bathysphere had detached from Daedalus Dominion just before it collapsed under what looked like several torpedo strikes launched from the center of Rapture. Ernie had no other choice but to close the door and launch as the Mona Momma disappeared in the falling rubble with Lily and any chances of Wyatt and Darren were nullified as the corridor was blocked off. That didn’t stop Sandy and Sally from almost tearing Ernie apart as he refused to turn back around.

“There is no way, we had no choice! I… I don’t even know how to control this thing, Wyatt did…” Ernie said.

Hearing Wyatt’s name, Sally unexpectedly let go of Ernie’s arm, sat down and covered her face. Sandy let go as well, but then went to stand by the window as she saw Daedalus Dominion being devoured by the ocean. The stoic balance of nature didn’t raise her anger, Ryan’s disturbed power mongering did.

“Can you steer us towards Ryan?” Sandy asked.

“Wait… we’re going after him, seriously?” Charlie said as he tightened his hand into a fist. Finally.

“If we can get there. Can you do it?” Sandy said to Ernie.

“I’ll try,” Ernie said as he turned to the control panel and gestured to Buck how the heck they were going to do this. They were pretty sure that oxygen meter wouldn’t be that high forever… Was it even high?


Wyatt turned to see at the monstrosity that had its long grey arm finally wrapped around his abdomen and grinning at him with a bald scaly head like a bodyguard hung on ADAM that went swimming for weeks and turned into this leviathan; whose only somewhat human feature seemed to be its head. It had try to devour him and Sally before. Would he succeed now as Wyatt and Darren floated in the dark ocean water with debris falling all around them? Wyatt breathed into his helmet he had ever so hurriedly put on and quickly decided he wouldn’t go down without a fight. He put his hand’s tips onto the freakishly long scaly arm and fired another shock towards the leviathan man. Not waiting for the weakened signal to reach the other end of the arm as it tightened its grip on him, he rammed his turret arm into the green deformed and bony tentacle and mowed it into very tiny pieces very quickly.

Darren tried to throw a polyp, but the water pressure was ever increasing and it was simply too dense to begin with and he looked at Wyatt’s helmet, as it wasn’t really transparent, but Wyatt got the hint. He felt his hand ever more deforming and pulsing with throbbing veins just before he yanked on the polyp with all his might and launched it into the leviathan man, giving Wyatt just enough time to escape its crushing grasp and watch the leviathan man wrinkling all over as his arm flailed about, missing him by a water droplet. Then Darren gestured at the behemoth, with the little control he had through the diluted pheromones. It did seem to work however and as the leviathan man calmed down as the soothing spell of obedience fell over him, Darren knew it was limited and soon the spell would fall and they would be slain. He focused all his EVE he had produced and startled the obedient beast man as he felt his arm coming towards him, resting on his chest then wrapping itself around his neck and feeling his own tight grip for the first and only time as his neck crumbled under the might of his own monstrous arm.

Darren felt something changing and he swam as fast as he could towards the monster before it regained its free will. Wyatt shouted inside his helmet that he couldn’t afford this risk, that they had to get out of here right now, but Darren didn’t hear him. The yellow eyes became darker again as the creature’s pupils widened and it became aware of what Darren had tried to do to him. He roared at Darren as bubbles encircled the gills in his neck before the latter struck him in the heart with his rusty needle and drained all its ADAM and absorbing and thus taking it for himself. The creature’s lights went out and Darren whispered: “Ziz.”

Then the metal arches fell on top of him and Wyatt.